Zero's Shock
by Rogue Vector
Summary: It is time for the springtime summoning rite. Louise Françoise Le Blanc de La Vallière, AKA 'Louise the Zero', meet Jack Ryan, AKA 'Mr. B'. Kind of. Would you kindly try not to kill each other?
1. Zero's Unexpected Familiar

**A/N: Jack in this story cuts a balance between both bad and good end Jacks; he has becoma a leader among the splicers, while still holding the favor of the Little Sisters. He has found that he's becoming a revolutionary leader, and he's been rebuilding a part of Rapture even as he prepares to leave the hellhole behind.**

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**= 4 January 1961, The Sanctuary =**

Jack patrolled the edges of the building, known only as 'The Sanctuary', the fortress-base of the Rapture Liberation Front. The dim glow of the lights still functioning in the underwater city lighting up the narrow metal corridors was enough for him to be able to see. His wrench rested in his hand, and his left hand crackled with occasional fluctuations of energy as his plasmid auto-stabilized the charge he held in his fingers, ready to unleash the fistful of lightning in an instant if he needed it. Making his way down the twisting corridors that was their perimeter, Jack paused as he approached a corner.

There were a pair of splicers, not nearly as deformed as the usual fare that was Rapture's crazed denizens, standing around a burning barrel, chatting to each other as their eyes searched the corridors about them. The one on the right carried a shotgun on his shoulders, while the one on the left held a drum-fed submachine gun in his hands. As he approached, Jack made sure to make noise, the claps of his boots with the iron grating underneath him alerting both to his approach. The two splicers whirled around, their weapons rising to track the approaching figure.

"Heya, fellas." Smiled Jack, who greeted the two with a curt nod. Both returned the greetings to their leader with grins and waves, relaxing as they spotted the living legend amongst the citizens of Rapture.

"Evenin', boss." Grinned the splicers, who turned their guns away from him.

The other one continued on. Colin liked to ramble. "Didn't catch ya for a while, so I forgot to say Happy New Year, boss." He chuckled. "But as I was sayin',

Even though the man in front of him was his elder by decades, the younger man nodded and exchanged handshakes with the recovering Splicer. He stood with the two, digging out a packet of ciagrettes and passing it around, the lighter he fished out of his pocket flaring up the twisted tips of the white sticks. The three of them sat there for a while, basking in the comfort of a good smoke.

Tenenbaum had certainly done a good job, synthesizing large amounts of Lot 192 and starting – with the team of Fontaine's former plasmid researchers - on a new line of ADAM-stabilizing tonics, letting the people of Rapture enjoy their plasmids without the mental instability, if only for a short while; the 'test subjects' for the ADAM-stabilizer were starting to show signs of relapsing. Regular dosages would have to suffice, for now.

He bid the two splicers good night, and promised to send someone to check up on them later on; they had lost a few 'outposts' like this to roving bands of the more feral denizens of Rapture.

The city was doomed, though, and as Jack punched in his access codes for the pneumo, he looked up to spot another splicer leaping from wall to wall, his white lab coat trailing in the air behind him as he jumped up to reach a broken light. A Rosie-type Big Daddy was thump-thump-thumping away with its rivet gun, working with a pair of repurposed security drones to repair a leak in the walls.

The war against Ryan had meant that a lot of the front-liners were the truly gone, and that had... helped.

Skilled technicians, engineers and research/development boffins had stayed in the rear, protected by the iron shield of Ryan and Atlas, developing new and better weapons. It was them that were deprived of the truly destabilizing ADAM, and that was something that Jack had been thankful for. Once freed of their servitude, the more educated were quite happy to help maintain the crumbling underwater city until they could evacuate everyone.

Now it was a matter of making sure that all the rest of the citizens – and the Little Sisters - were accounted for. Jack wasn't going to leave any of them behind. In this hell-upon earth, he wasn't going to betray the ideals instilled upon him by Tenenbaum. Save every one you can, however you can. Some could be taken back to the surface, while others would have to be put down.

Jack stepped past a security camera, and then disappeared.

= **Inside the Little Sister's Orphanage **=

In the darkness, a voice cried out.

"Daddy?"

Silence greeted the plea for her guardian, broken only by the soft snores of the room. A few seconds passed. Then a minute. All around the room, a sudden tension filled the air. Stirring in the dim light of the main dormitory, the other girls began to cry out as well, wakened not by the noise of their sisters, but the unnatural silence that had followed. Daddy wasn't there. Reality had been broken; Daddy was _always_ there.

"Where's Daddy?" Panic, now.

More voices cried out, more voices of fear and uncertainty as the fear rippled through the dormitory like a plague. It gnawed at their minds, the anxiety of their early days returning as girls reacted in their entire spectrum of emotions; some remained stoic and simply searched, while others broke down and began to cry, their more mature friends seeking the crying ones out to comfort them.

_Mother. Where was mother?_

A few slipped out of their beds, eyes already searching the walls around them. The room was empty of any comfort. Now the walls – whitewashed and covered with drawings – were darker. The half-remembered shapes of their protectors now menacing. Spooked, the sisters ran down the stairs, finding the bedroom of their other parent.

"Mother. Mother!"

Tenenbaum rose from the bed, and hurried to the door. She searched around, and knelt down by the children, scooping Melissa up into her arms, she looked around for their father.

"What is wrong, _schätzchen_?"

The Little Sisters cried out as one. "Where's Daddy?"

= **Near the Tristain Academy of Magic **=

A bright light?

But... wasn't it midnight only a few minutes ago?

His fingers tightened its grip around the object that was held in his hand. Cold metal greeted him, warmed by his flesh, and the man leaped up, going from lying down on the ground to standing in the blink of an eye, his body falling back to artificially-implanted automatic responses.

When Tenenbaum and Suchong had programmed his mind, they didn't just add controls; they also added abilities, subconscious training and the 'muscle-memories' learned from Rapture's dozens of mercenaries.

His feet were already spread out in a combat stance, one seen in many training manuals and demonstrated by men in black belts; low, balanced and rock-steady while still being as fluid as air. His hands now gripped the familiar weight of his wrench, which had been gathering dust trapped between the bedside table and his bed. He must have sensed whatever had brought him here, reached for the comfort of his weapon of choice just before he had been brought here.

The chipped red paint seemed to pulse in the sunlight, the hard steel looking like a monster's claw as its balance was again tested by the one who wielded it. The half-opened wrench head could have been taken for a wolf's jaw, hanging half-open as it searched for something to bite.

Now assured of his ability to fight, Jack began to consciously scan around him.

Dozens of faces; young (and one old), with hair of many bright shades (and one without). Slim figures, not-so-slim ones, outright fat ones. All dressed in black robes. Scared was the general consensus among the expressions around him, although a few were curious.

Despite being only three years old chronologically, his body was matured to that of a young man in his prime; twenty two at the oldest of estimates. Though his throat, part of his face and his arms were scarred from the many battles that he had gone through to be where he was now, Jack still cut a handsome figure. He wasn't quite dressed, but the winter night and inevitable cries of his daughters had demanded some rather thick garments for sleep. A woolen sweater and thick wool pants had been the order of the night, before he had retired to bed.

Jack's eyes fell on the movement he caught from the corner of his eye; the balding man had raised his staff, holding it close to his body as he stepped past a pink-haired girl. Pink harried? Seriously? Even the crazed denizens of Rapture hadn't tried that.

The man – easily the oldest of the group gathered here – stepped slightly in front of the young pinkette as she fell to the grass, her legs folding up underneath her, ankles splayed out to either side of her robes.

"_Who are you?" _He asked, in a language that Jack found impossible to decipher.

Shaking his head Jack loosened the grip on his weapon and shrugged. He didn't understand them, and tried to deliver that meaning through his body language.

"_He doesn't understand us? What kind of a familiar is that?"_

"_A stupid one, duh." _Chuckled another voice. The amusement was apparent, and Jack wheeled around to spot a girl, laughing imperiously as she held a dainty hand over her mouth.

"_As expected of Louise the Zero! A useless commoner for a familiar, who can't even understand us!"_

"SHUT UP!"

Wait. He understood that...

"_Familiars are suited perfectly to the mage that summons them, Zero!"_

_"Yeah, this suits you perfectly! A commoner summon for a commoner-level mage!"_

Angry, the pinkette who he had just understood stood up and started screaming at the others. They picked on her, that he could see. Jack cautiously eyed the people around him, wondering about what to do now as a chant was taken up amongst the others.

"_Zero ability! Zero success! Zero..."_

"I! SAID! SHUT! _UP!_"

The younger girl seemed to explode in a rage that would have made even a Big Daddy hesitate, and almost seemed ready to brandish her wand when a voice called them to heel; more stern faced now, the man called out to the students.

"_Please, students, enough of this! The 'Summon Servant' rite is still underway!" _Pleaded the 'teacher'. He turned away from the class and back to the girl. "_Louise, please finish the contract."_

Judging by the repetition of 'Louise' when talking to the girl, that was her name or title. Said Louise rocked back as if struck. "What~! But... Professor Colbert, there must be some mistake! _This_ can't be my familiar!"

The 'familiar' frowned. He didn't know why, but he felt like he should be insulted.

"_As far as I can tell, the 'Summon Servant' spell went off completely without any complications. This... human is the familiar chosen for you."_ Explained 'Colbert'.

"B-b-but... Professor!" Sputtered the girl.

Professor Colbert sighed, and crossed his arms thoughtfully. "_I really am interested in how a human was summoned, but the Springtime Servant Summoning ritual is a sacred rite, Louise. You must complete it."_

"_Don't mess it up again!"_ Jeered another voice.

"Shut up!"

It was weird, being able to understand only one half of the conversation. Like listening to someone arguing over a telephone. The fact that he could understand the pinkette and yet find communicating with the others in this cult impossible chilled him. Something weird was going on, even more so than the mutated splicers, the Big Daddies (he had peeled one open, a long time ago. What was inside was... messy) and the whole underwater-city-of-Rapture.

Back at the summoning rite, Louise's voice took on an aggrieved tone as she cried out and pointed at a drill-haired girl.

"Professor Colbert, Montromercy the Flood just insulted me!"

This 'Montromercy' seemed to have a similar temper to this Louise girl, and similarly shot up the volume of her protests and insults. The rest of it was the usual playground screaming. Jack ignored it as he watched the scenery around him. It was the total opposite of Rapture; rather than metal walls and artificial lighting, the rolling hills and dark forests around him made him wonder again where his family was. It would be nice, having a picnic up here. The girls had only known a claustrophobic world, prisoners inside of their own mind...

"_Louise, please!"_

It would have been good, to see them in such an open place...

"Alright, alright, fine. I'll finish the contract."

Frowning, Jack ignored the rest of the conversation as it devolved back into childish bullying, and shook his head again. He let out a sigh, the sun of the early springtime baking him in his warm clothes, despite the chilly breeze that whipped around the school. He was feeling hot under the collar, so while everyone argued, Jack began making himself more comfortable, rolling his sleeves up to his elbows, exposing the pair of chain-tattoos on his wrist.

His mind wandered, despite the fact that he was in a very unfamiliar territory. Blanking out was dangerous, but he had been doing it a lot recently.

"You should count yourself lucky. Normally you'd go your whole life without a noble doing this to you."

What had happened to his little Sisters? What of Tenenbaum?

"My name is Louise Françoise Le Blanc de La Vallière. Pentagon of the Five Elemental Powers; bless this humble being, and make him my familiar."

Still dazed and confused, Jack only realized that she had cupped his head in her hands just before she kissed him.

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**Alright, so what do you guys think of this fic? Review if you want me to continue, please!**


	2. Zero's First Kiss

_**Alrighty, chapter 2 of Zero Shock is up! Not much to say. Jack's plasmids are:**_

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_Combat:_ Armored Shell 1 & 2, Wrench Jockey 1 & 2, Wrench Lurker 2 and Electric Flesh 2

_Engineering:_ Clever Inventor - [gonna change it so that he's more mechanically-minded rather than having an effect on the shop.], the others are irrelevant.

_Physical:_ Bloodlust, Booze Hound, Extra Nutrition 2 & 3, Medical Expert 3 and Sports Boost 2.

He has the six Combat Plasmids from Bioshock, except to Bioshock 2 effects (as in using E-Bolt 3 will cause a stream of electricity rather than just a burst of it).

_Plasmids:_ Electro Bolt 3, Incinerate! 3, Winter Blast 3, Telekinesis 3, Insect Swarm 3 and Cyclone Trap 3.

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Her lips pressed against his. There was really nothing else to say about what the action was, but there was a lot to say about how he felt.

Jack couldn't help but feel every detail of the girl as his hands hung limp at his side and her nails dug into the flesh that covered his jaw. For some reason, in that instant all his programmed combat instincts kicked in. Time slowed to a crawl as his mental processes accelerated. It was like someone had recorded every sensation and event in that few seconds, then played it back at half speed in that brief moment where the girl had seized him and then pressed her lips against his.

She was soft. Her lips, that is. As were her cheeks. His nose brushed against them, and in that moment he felt the heat of her face. 'Louise's hair – that silk-like mane of shocking bright pink - whispered against his ear, powered along by the breeze that surrounded them. Wind. Natural wind. It was probably the first time he had ever felt it, just like this would be the first time he had felt a girl's lips against his. The girl had closed her eyes, her brow knotted furiously as she pressed herself closer. He could feel her trembling, her shoulder shaking as a shocking current passed between them.

And then, the kiss was over.

Spluttering as his mind kicked back into 'thinking' and Jack did a double take as the girl pulled away, her cheeks as bright red as a raging Big Daddy's portholes.

She... kissed him?

Why?

His fingers came up to his mouth, and briefly brushed over the moistened patches of his formerly dry lips.

The girl's gaze were transfixed to his, both unable to break away as they stared into each others' eyes. Her irises were – unlike his dark brown shade – a bright pink, almost the same as her hair in shade. In them, he could see that she nursed hope, this all framed by confusion and a slight shock of fear.

He opened his mouth to say something, but then his left hand came alight.

No, it wasn't like Incinerate! or any of the other plasmids that he had wielded. It was like being shot, or pressing his palm against a boiling hot pipe. The back of his hand burned, and he wished it all to go away. He had held fire in between his finger. Spikes of ice had grown out of his skin, and his touch had frozen water. At one moment, his wrist had been a hive for hornets and another time – the first time – his fingers were a buzzing mass of dormant lightning. But none of that compared to the unfamiliar pain of what he felt now.

Jack hissed in pain, the snake-like sound making the people around him flinch as he clutched at his wrist, his eyes burning bright with the kick his adrenaline afforded him. He clenched his jaw tight, and slammed his fist into the ground, driving the earth down about half an inch as the runes were burned into his palm. The man – Colbert - stepped forward, concern etched on his face.

"May I have a look at your hand, young man?"

The younger of the two took a quick half-pace back, his wrench again swinging forward to guard himself, placed cautiously in front of him.

More voices. More jeers. _"How barbaric! Look at that club he's using!"_

"_What is he, a stone-man?"_ Chuckled a second.

"_But... I can feel it!" _Whispered a third excitedly. _"That metal... that's steel! You'd only find that kind of steel in swords!"_

"Familiar!" Snapped the pinkette. "What are you doing? Show your hand to him already!"

Jack narrowed his eyes at the girl who had been so daring only a few moments ago, and continued to speak to him that strange word; familiar. Just what did it mean? He nodded, carefully, and lowered the steel wrench, though it was not far from him when he offered the other man his hand. Kneeling down in front of him, the man reached out and inspected what had been etched onto the back of Jack's hand, scribbling down what he read off.

"_Interesting... very interesting. Almost... familiar."  
_

One of the students groaned. _"Please tell me that Professor Colbert wasn't just trying to be funny just then."  
_

"_Professor Colbert wasn't just trying to be funny just then." _Repeated a second, in a mock deadpan that sent a bespectacled bluette behind her book.

There were even more suffering exhalations. Jack couldn't help but smirk a little; just the _feeling_ that they exuded made him want to smile. One of long suffering, the other of dull resignation. Those two guys now began to march to the edge of the circle, their cloaks billowing dramatically in the wind.

The professor shifted, standing up now, and then nodded to this 'Louise' character. She marched stiffly over to where the professor stood, now intensely studying the scratch-marks that he had scribbled down on a scroll. They were letters, Jack realized, but exactly what they meant still confused him. Frowning as the gathering dispersed, seemingly ignoring him, Jack began to walk away as the girl scowled at him.

"Come, Familiar!"

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Back in the castle, Louise fell onto her bed and looked up at the towering figure of her familiar. She had to admit, he was rather handsome... her eyes traveled over his form, insisting that this was simply to familiarize herself with the shape and form of her summoned being. His clothes were thick and warm, although by now he had adjusted it to expose more of his skin; no doubt that he was getting hot under the collar with the weather being bright and sunny all day.

The skin itself was almost alabaster white. His arms were well muscled, and his hands were thick and strong. Her cheeks warmed slightly as she realized what she was thinking, but soon her curiosity was drawn to his fingers and palms; they were – in the left hand particularly – scarred. 'Traumatized' was the best word for it. Burns, punctures, outright craters of flesh pockmarked and covered his hands. Though his fingers moved with a dextrous deftness as he moved to secure his wrench to his waist; it was his weapon of choice, she realized, as he had a leather harness to secure it parallel to his belt, and by testing it she saw that he could perform a lightning-fast draw when he wanted to.

So... a warrior? But his bearing was too refined for that weapon! A knight? Then where was his armor? A noble? His clothes were all rags! They looked incredibly warm, and well made, yes, but... his ragged clothes were torn, burnt and stained in so many places that it wasn't funny – he was a commoner!

Louise stood back up, and flourished her hand at him, pointing at the man accusingly, she barked out a sharp question – though in her voice, she knew she heard a quaver of fear in her tone.

"Just who are you, Familiar?"

The splicer/messiah rubbed the back of his neck, and spoke. "Jack."

Jack?

"Jacques?" She queried, testing the name for herself.

"No." The man repeated. "Jack."

He sighed, which made Louise bristle with frustration, and then looked pointedly at her, which made her even more annoyed.

"Yours?" He asked, giving her time now to introduce herself.

"What!"

"Name."

Such bluntness... The commoner had such nerve! Louise flushed with rage, and approached him threateningly, trying to regain control of the situation, trying to reassert her authority over her familiar.

"How dare you speak to a noble like that!" She practically spat, sputtering in indignation as she pushed himself closer to him, trying to tower her five foot frame over the much more imposing familiar.

Grinding her teeth, Louise began to lash out. "A commoner shouldn't speak like that to their better, much less when you are my familiar!"

Jack frowned, his gaze inquisitive as she continued to shout at him, unheeding of her anger. He wasn't cowering, he wasn't even apologetic. The man was staring off into space, completely uninfluenced by her rebukes, and Louise only got angrier as he apparently continued to ignore her.

"Hey, are you even listening to me!" She drew her hand back, her emotions driving her to strike him. Louise's slap was stopped by the backhand counter that stopped her 'punishment' cold a few inches from his face. He looked at the delicate palm for a moment, and then pushed it away.

"H-how dare you!" She was stuttering now, as Jack frowned more deeply.

At last, he spoke. "What for?"

"What for?" Louise echoed him. The callousness of her familiar made her sputter, at a complete loss of words as she tried to find a proper word to describe just how disrespectful the familiar had been. "You... you... cheeky -!"

"Why?" He asked again, pressing her for a reason.

Balking at the man, she wondered at the answer for that. She had never had to answer that question before. Stumbling on her words, Louise finally settled on an answer.

"A familiar shouldn't speak so brazenly to their master!"

"Familiar?" The voice that answered was genuinely confused. Louise sighed. Of course a commoner wouldn't know what a familiar was!

She frowned, wonderingly running her eyes over his face. He was showing real concern right now. Louise sighed, and decided that some explanation was in order. Standing in front of him, with her hand on an elbow while the other pointed to the ceiling, she assumed a lecturing position that was equal parts strict and adorable. The wrist bent, so that the finger was now pointing at Jack.

"You don't know what a familiar is, do you?"

A negatory shake of the head.

"I'll explain." She allowed. This really was an irritating day. "A familiar is a creature summoned by magic to serve their master. They perform tasks for the master – such as retrieving reagents and ingredients for potions – as well as granting an enhancement in sight and hearing. That means that what a familiar can see, their master can see as well."

Jack nodded. Even though she hated having to wait for the commoner to process the information, she continued on anyway.

"As well as that, the familiar has to protect their master! Now, I'm... kind of sure that you're a healthy person, but you're absolutely useless! A commoner – no, even ten - can't keep up with even a dot mage in fighting ability, so you're absolutely useless in that regard!"

_Louise the Zero, getting the familiar with zero fighting ability._ Just great. She could hear the insults already.

"I can fight." Murmured Jack. He seemed... insulted? The man was affronted at having to admit his own weakness? Louise snorted at that, and simply gestured at him.

"Oh, and what kind of skills do you have, then? I can see that you're probably strong, but what proof do you have that you can fight on the same level as a mage?"

"Big Daddy." He declared, if a little smugly.

"Huh?"

"I killed one." Jack explained. Then he seemed to realize something, and rectified his error. "More than one."

"... wait, what?" Balking at him, the young mage drew just short of scratching her head in confusion. "So you killed an oversized father, and you're _proud _of it?"

The man frowned, as if confused at her derision at him having taken down a Big Daddy, and nodded. "Very tough."

"Oh, I'm sure." Louise drawled. "Tough for _you_, maybe, but for a dot mage a commoner is simply no match!"

This time, it was the familiar before her that took on an affronted expression. "Hmph."

Jack – had he been a more expressive man – would have been tearing his hair out in frustration as he tried to convey the fact that in the Rapture Food Chain, Big Daddies tended to be near the top. Splicers could not go toe-to-toe with the Protectors without suffering greatly. Especially when inconvenienced by things such as a drill that was boring through their body and sucking chest wounds from a rivet that had been launched from something of an autocannon.

In the majority of the life that he knew was real, Jack had a deep seated respect for all Big Daddies. A respect between warriors, born of the many bouts of bowel-voiding terror that shook him when a Bouncer was charging at him, drill whining in a banshee howl as the ground shook from the pounding footsteps. Or when a Rosie started emptying its rivet-gun at him as he tried to rescue the Little Sisters that they protected, each thunderclap slap of its metronome gun punching holes in bulkheads and walls, cratering wood and smashing marble as the unerring tracking of the Rosie followed him, each shot missing only by virtue of poor construction and plenty of hard cover.

But now this girl was questioning that. He frowned, wonderingly. Both of them were going to have such furrowed eyebrows after this...

"Hard to kill." He explained again. Jack was a man of few words, and it showed as soon as the prince of Rapture retreated into a depression after killing Atlas. He had been a wordless leader, his will extended through gesture and through others. Tenenbaum had been the real leader and plotter behind Rapture's brief restoration, while he had been her enforcer and figurehead for the splicers, who looked up to the 'intruder' and 'outsider' as a conqueror and king.

His thoughts drifted away from Louise and her childish rants, off to where his friend and mentor was now. The Little Sisters... how were they faring? The Big Daddies were still around, and in massive concentrations around the orphanage. They were being better equipped now, though they were still single-minded on their task of protecting their Little Sisters. And he trusted the Splicers, now free of their mind-warping drugs, but all it took was one wrong turn, and Rapture would all go to hell and the abyss, his family included.

"Familiar! Listen to me when I am talking!"

Jack looked up. Louise was irritated and scowling at him. "Like I said, familiar: Since you can't do anything useful, you'll just have to do menial tasks. Laundry, cleaning, things like that."

The man seemed to consider this for a moment, and the idea that he was free to refuse the command infuriated the girl further. However, tact was a virtue for a noble, and she would exercise that same tact when it came to dealing with this impudent fool of a familiar.

Now facing her, he nodded as he weighed up the duties he would have to perform. "I can do that." He finally allowed.

Cheeks blazing bright red, she turned away from him.

Louise marched to a cupboard and began to undress, unclasping her cloak and throwing it across the bed. Her stockings soon followed, and the girl began to work through the buttons of her shirt – she was a bottom starter, meaning that she started with the buttons at the bottom and worked her way up. Seeing as he had been in charge of the safety and everyday needs of something in the range of dozens of young girls, Jack simply shook his head and half-turned away. She had this under control, so he wouldn't be bothered about it.

The undressing stopped, and then one, two, three articles of clothing were shuffled into. His hearing told him even before the girl spoke that she had finished. Jack still remained, though, seeing as he had no interest in that girl whatsoever that warranted he look at her. Instead, he was stretching and yawning, preparing for his own sleep.

Turning around, he arched an eyebrow when he found that the girl was in front of him, her neck craning to keep her eyes pointed the right way, the bundle of clothes in her hand.

"Well?" She asked, still flushed red as she glared at him.

Uh...

"You look good?" He ventured, unsure of what to say.

"No! Not that! You're meant to complain about me undressing, or something! Then I'd be able to drive home the fact that you're a familiar! Its... unfair! Say something already!"

Jack frowned. "I have... family."

Louise's eyes widened slightly, and then turned into a confused frown. She was trying to 'connect the dots' with her thoughts.

"Like you." He allowed, gesturing at her. Like her in appearance, yes. But unlike the Little Sisters, this girl was _nasty_. "I am..." Jack paused, trying to find the word that even now alluded him. "... accustomed."

"I... I see." Louise was... embarrassed?

"W-well, now I'm going to sleep! And you make sure these clothes are clean!"

Jack frowned as the clothes were shoved into his hands. "They are."

"No they are not! They're filthy!"

Jack inspected the clothes once more. Louise's face flushed.

"What are you doing! ?"

Face buried in her shirt, Jack looked down at the girl that had been wearing the clothes he was now sniffing.

"They don't smell."

"Wh-wh... you perverted familiar! I say they're dirty, so they're dirty! Now shoo! Go get them clean, and you'd better not come back until they're spotless!"

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_**As usual, guys, please review! As with Toy Hammer (which I am still working on, although the latest chapter is a little tricky.), we have a critique-for-cameo deal. Just flip me a PM and we'll discuss. I'm not too familiar with the ZnT verse and the Bioshock verse as I am with 40k-verse, so I may be a little AU here in regards to translating game mechanics into the actual effects of the plasmids/tonics, and I may get things off with the personalities of the ZnT verse characters (which is the reason why I love having an all-OC cast, like ToyHammer's).**_


	3. Zero's Wandering Servant

**_Happy New Years, everyone. __Enjoy the new chapter, and if you do please review; well thought out feedback is muse-fuel for me, since it gives me something to work with and is quite frankly the only reason outside of 'lol, this might be fun' that I write at all._**

**_

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_**

Louise reached out, and groped for a pillow. The young mage pulled it towards her, and wrapped her arms around it, pulling it tightly against her face. She held it close, trying to imagine it as her sister. It had been almost two years ago since the last time she had been in her sister's arms. The familiarity of that embrace – however artificial it was – comforted her as she pondered about her familiar.

'I have... family.' Was what he had said.

The pink-haired mage found herself thinking.

_Family..._

Mother and father. Big sister Eleanor and big sis Cattleya... Louise wondered what kind of a family that her familiar spoke of.

_Like you._

A... a younger sister? Louise frowned. Like her? In what way? She let out a sigh, her warm breath spreading over her face as her exhalation heated the pillow's fabric. So her familiar had a family. That wasn't something new; he was a human, after all, and even commoners had families. Sometimes those families were larger than the ones that were found in nobility.

But there was that one important thing: He had family.

Logic had to be a cruel thing, a demon of the mind, because now Louise could feel that detached, logical part of her psyche was chuckling, laughing at her as it pointed out the simple conclusions that it had reached.

_I took him away from his family._

He was a man, and not to mention he looked to be in the prime of his youth, even if he did look a little gaunt and haggard. For a commoner, such a member of their family would be a keystone to their finances, meager as they were. A skilled craftsman, such as a blacksmith, would earn typically about sixty new gold pieces in a year. A farmer perhaps forty five. Louise could have as much as fifty on her at a time as spending money. She often carried on her person more money than a typical family of commoners would come by in a year, perhaps even more than that.

Just how much had she taken away from the family that Jack had spoken of? And for what? So he could be your menial servant? Jack would be no more useful than a simple serf! But he's more than a serf; he has a family, and you took him away from that.

**= Tristain Academy of Magic. Dormitory Hallways, Eastern side... =**

Okay... now what?

Jack glanced back at the door, which was now shut firmly. He was holding the clothes of a girl that claimed that she was his master and he her familiar. It included undergarments and other articles that would have – in another time, place and context – landed him in prison for various crimes that would have made any sane man redden in rage. Frowning, he tried to re-arrange the jumbled garments in his hands. The end result was that it was still a bundle of jumbled garments, except for the robe, which was wrapped around the rest of the bundle. Great. Now he looked like a hobo ready to travel.

The brainwashed son of a king and a showgirl stopped dead in his tracks, and pondered for a moment. How had I known that? Stupid artificial memories with stereotypes and generalizations...

He looked around him, trying to get a bearing on the surrounding... territory. The hallways were made of stone – a lateral change from the brass and glass walls of Rapture, although that pressing sense of claustrophobia was still there, overriding the sense of freedom he had whenever a rush of wind swept in through the window. Jack couldn't help but feel that he was curious about this place. How long had it been here? What was its history? Despite the fact that he was new to this place and didn't have a clue about how anything worked, everything he saw or heard was new. Although he could easily stick a head out of the window to properly appraise his situation, looking at the ground below had given him an uneasy shock of vertigo, forcing him to duck back inside.

Deciding on finding the laundry (that was the name of a place to clean clothes, right? The last 'laundry place' had been a laundromat with a particularly deceptive splicer running it. One hell of a nasty clean up job there...), wherever it was, Jack started down the stairs. He might as well find out more about the place while he was at it, too. Perhaps a map was what he needed.

Resolving to familiarize himself with the place, especially since it was now that dark, slightly damp night that Jack found to be amazingly comfortable to move around in. Again he found the surroundings to be too much Rapture-like. Compared to the surrounding environment; of rolling hills and plains, much like a huge Arcadia... Jack shook those thoughts from his head as he felt movement. He moved softly, thanks to the upgraded version of the 'Lurker' tonic that he now carried in his DNA. His feet quietened to a whisper soft footfall, the rush of the tonic's effects slowing down his breathing, the sounds of his movements quietening. Just short of truly silent, Jack dipped into the shadows.

"_Ah, Katie dearest!"_ Crooned a voice.

It was one from the 'summoning rite' that had brought him here. Jack listened a little more. Obviously, he couldn't quite understand them, but the tone of voice seemed to be the same here; praise was being given, though it was false and probably going to cause problems in the future.

"_Oh my, this is absolutely delicious! Never before have I ever tasted a souffle quite like this before!"_ Male, young. Extravagant. Black cape, white fluffy shirt. Pants of an indeterminate color in this darkness. Like Sander Cohen, only not quite as scary. Even then, still had less style as well. Lying, too. Jack could feel it in the voice; patronizing lies were being told here, but the girl was simply too naïve to see that.

"_Of course, there have been chefs and cooks that have done it in a more professional manner with their own cooking, but this souffle has soul! Such a taste that not only appeals to the tongue but to my heart as well!"_

Delicate yet oozing with self-confidence, he judged. Inching forward, Jack made his way forward, though he didn't want to attract their attention. Wonderingly, he tried to remember if he still had Natural Camouflage in... dammit, he didn't know that he could miss Rapture. Or at least a Gene Bank so that he could check what he had installed...

"R-really?"

It was now that he got a good look at the girl that was being talked up.

She was pretty, and young. Her clothes were much like Louise's, except that there seemed to be a difference in color for her cape, possibly as an indicator of his master's seniority. Short and slim, she was however already starting to grow into a woman. Jack fought hard not to picture her as one of his adopted daughters, all grown up and learning about life. The girls had always been afraid to talk to others; the were shy, and would never speak to anyone unless they had seen Jack or Tenenbaum talk to them first, removing their 'stranger' status.

He resisted the urge to sigh in frustration, and moved on.

His wanderings took him through many twisting passageways, all lit with a flame that would not extinguish – Jack had spent (perhaps wasted) a full minute trying to blow out a candle with his breath, only for it to re-ignite again, despite the fact that it was only a flame settled atop a small cup made of brass atop a white cylinder of beautifully smooth stone. They were like candle substitutes made of... what? Magic?

Curious.

He continued on, searching the halls for somewhere to get the clothes cleaned up. He didn't quite know where, and his 'master' had neglected to tell him where such cleaning facilities existed, further confusing the problems that he encountered. The night-life out here seemed subdued compared to Rapture. There were few – if any – people in the hallways, and as he pondered this Jack frowned.

When he had these thoughts he usually was proven wrong in the next few moments.

Sighing, he rounded the corner, and sure enough there was someone there.

Colbert was walking in the opposite direction, a ball of flame hovering in the air in front of him as he levitated the staff along behind him. The older man was holding a stack of books in his hands; easily a half-dozen tomes as thick as his two hands pressed together. They were inches apart when they caught sight of each other, as both were trying to round the corner with a whisker to spare. Jack started, and so did he, almost dropping his books as he did.

"_You!"_

Jack blinked.

"_You are Miss Valliere's summoned familiar, are you not?"_

Hoping that this would not be a rude gesture, Jack mimed 'I don't understand'. He tilted his head to one side, then shook his head.

"_What's this? You can't speak?"_

Jack repeated the gesture.

"_I see... you cannot understand me? That explains why you did not respond to me when I asked you to show me your runes... and I'm still trying to talk to you..."_

Colbert sighed, apparently getting it now. Jack smiled apologetically, and tried to move around the man as he continued on his way. A hand grabbed him, though, and Jack reacted instinctively; torso swinging around. His left hand snapped up, already moving to catch the man's wrist. Instead, it found itself grasping at air, then a sudden pain as his hand was slapped down.

Jack sprang back, wrenching free his most trusted weapon as the man's staff seemed to appear in his hands, the books neatly stacked up on the ground behind him.

The two looked at each other. Jack sized up his opponent, a rather detached and amused part of his mind telling him that that this was the first time his opponent had actually stood still in the open when they were fighting. There had been plenty that had stood still (there was a reason that Jack gave statues a wide berth) but never like this.

He licked his lips, although he resisted the temptation to blink. Jack didn't want to miss a single beat, because that might cost him his life if this turned ugly.

"Surrender." The splicer snapped, trying to provoke a reaction from the other. His voice was low, guttural; though Tenenbaum had removed most of the Big Daddy modifications, his voice had been irreparably downshifted an octave. Although Jack compensated for it by pitching high whenever he spoke, it wasn't like the voice of a Big Daddy was useless at all times. It was just damned intimidating when it needed to be.

Both stared at the other, before Colbert let out a sigh, and relaxed. Jack paused for a few moments more, still tense and alert. The man didn't seem to be hostile anymore, and finally the splicer allowed himself to relax, setting aside his wrench and slipping it back into the harness on his back. The bundle of Louise's clothes were picked up and held again like a football in his hands.

"_Peace, Familiar of Valliere. I don't mean you any harm."_ The man tried to speak, attempting to be reassuring. _"I do have so many questions for you... well, I suppose I should have thought of this sooner, actually. Stand still for a moment."_

Jack turned around again, to face the older man as he rummaged about inside his robes.

"_Quite honestly, I thought the summoning ritual would have included the translation spell,but it appears as if Miss Valliere had failed in that particular aspect of the rite..."_

A small wand was produced – it was very clean and polished (almost new looking) – and then pointed at him, centered on his chest. Jack regarded it carefully, although it seemed the man was now looking to help him...

"_Spirits of the Wind, grant this creature the tongue of our land."_

It was like getting a new plasmid; his body seemed like it had been set alight (and he knew how that felt). Veins and arteries lit up suddenly as his blood boiled, Jack's primal roar shaking the ground for a moment as his arms lit up. Colbert was taken by surprise, stumbling back as the man in front of him doubled over in renewed pain.

"Aaaagh..." Headache. The younger of the two men rubbed at his temples.

The professor frowned, his face teased into a frown with worry. "Are you alright?"

No. Jack remembered the same question being asked of him when he had been hurt once, and Tenenbaum answering for him. What make you think that he 'alright'? Was groaning your first clue? Perhaps stumbling?

"Unexpected." Rumbled Jack, again in his deeper voice, before straightening again. That felt like it had been some kind of new plasmid... How had that first splicer put it? A fish that had its cherry popped? Yeah, if that had been the correct description for how he had felt when he had first received Electro Bolt, then this was how he felt now. The pain was fading fast, and Jack wasn't about to let himself get thrown off balance just yet. He steadied himself, still clutching at Louise's clothes.

Colbert cocked his head to the side, and looked at Jack carefully. "Ah. It appears that I was successful... however, it shouldn't have hurt..."

"Tonic?" Jack asked, wondering if he had overridden any tonics with the addition of this new one.

The man blinked once, twice. "Tonic?" He parroted.

"That." Jack explained, pointing at the wand in his hand. He was curious to see if it was some new way of getting tonics into his bloodstream, or if it was something else altogether.

"What did I do? Well, a simple translation spell, actually... I learned it when I was asked to escort some foreign dignitaries, and we were unable to understand each other... ah, but I ramble."

The familiar stared at him. Obviously, there was something wrong with the spell, or the man simply had no clue about what just happened. Colbert sighed, hoping that he would be able to explain things a little better as he faced the younger man.

"Still confused, are we? This is what we call a translation spell to allow you to speak the tongues of this land..."

"..."

"Uhm... You don't know of magic?"

A nod.

Colbert studied the man in front of him intensely, trying to work out a more clear picture of the man's personality and character.

"I see... well... uhm... actually," His attention suddenly went off on a tangent. "what are you doing with those clothes?"

Jack looked down, to see that there was now a pair of panties poking out of the bundle that he was carrying. Something seemed determined to get him in trouble, it seemed. Colbert seemed to realize now what they were, and grew red in the face.

"Please don't tell me... you... uh... one of the students... I mean..."

"Cleaning."

Tension seemed to leave the man, who sighed in relief.

"I see. So I suppose your mistress has put you to work, then? I'll help you find one of the maids, and we can have that cleaned. Meanwhile, you can tell me about the land where you came from..."

No. Jack frowned. He did not come from any lands...

His gaze followed the professor as he made his way off down the hallways, before clearing his throat with calculated volume and pitch of cough; he wanted attention.

Colbert turned around, and arched an eyebrow questioningly.

Jack pointed at the books, still stacked neatly on the floor.

"Oh!"

**= Rapture, Argus Securities Control Room. =**

The doors burst inwards, and Tenenbaum stormed into the room's main review room. The half-dozen staff looked up, hands already going for weapons before suddenly relaxing. They knew the right-hand woman of their leader, and a few got up uncertainly to see if greeting her would be appropriate.

Two more came in from a side room, reels of tape in their arms. One still carried a smoking pistol, while the other was sporting a wound on his shoulder.

"Tenenbaum!"

The woman immediately crossed the room, and pinned the man to the wall with her hands.

"Where did he go!"

"Easy, Doctor! I'm worried about the Boss as well, same as you!"

Salvatore Luccio, the man in charge of security around this segment of Rapture, shook his head and indicated the rolls of tape that were being distributed even as the imposing form of the Doctor crossed her arms. Around her were a few of the more delicate Little Sisters, and ringed around them were a quartet of Big Daddies. It was a dangerously fragile entourage already, especially since Rapture was again alive with activity.

"We're looking into it now, going over all the security camera footage of the area." Salvatore waved out at a crude map of the surrounding area. "I've got teams going out and collect up even more tape from the recording stations, and the crazies aren't making it any easier for us." The Neo-Rapture chief of Security admitted. "I'm sorry, Doctor, but we're still trying to go through all the tapes. I have at least twenty cameras, and you say he's been gone for the last eight hours. Fact o' the matter is that people disappear in Rapture all the time, and we can't find 'em. Too many places to hide, you see..."

Sal shook his head, the little strips of flesh that were still re-growing on his forehead bubbling slightly. Agitated, he holstered his pistol quickly and sighed. "That's a hundred sixty hours worth of tape, and I've only got seven people who can work the gear we have here. I'll have an answer in the morning, though, unless Boss decides to show up. If you'll excuse me, I'll make the number of people reviewing the tapes to eight."

Composing herself again, the Doctor flicked back a greying hair and looked around the room, sending the other splicers back to their duties as they tried to avoid attracting the fierce woman's attention. "Very well..."

She hesitated, and sighed. Time to do this Jack's way.

"And thank you."

Nodding, Sal bid good night to the girls and returned to his work.

* * *

**_Yes, don't worry, I'm still working on ToyHammer and the other fics. Anyway, I appreciate any reviews, and I hope you guys look forward to my next chapter, for whichever story it may be!_**


	4. Zero's Dirty Laundry

**Chapter _4_**! **_You should know the modus operandi already; read, enjoy, review (please!)._**

* * *

Siesta cleaned. It was a statue that had so wrapped up her attention right now, her feather duster playing over it with simple, light touches. Each flick of her wrist was dusting off yet another imperfection from the smooth marble bust portraying the head and shoulders of the grim looking old man. Then again, being rendered in marble tended to make anyone look grim, but something else bothered her. Of course, the statue of a past headmaster would be enchanted to protect against the elements, but the fact that dust still layered on top of the surface just made her a little frustrated.

"I see... so where do you come from, Jacques?"

If you already chanted a statue to stay like it was forever, wouldn't it also be more effective if you magicked it to be more clean as well?

Still, that meant that she had a job, so she wasn't complaining.

"Jack? A shortened form of Jacques, perhaps?"

Siesta cleaned. Now it was a painting on a wall, a portrait of a mage-knight, the ideal noble warrior made into paint upon canvas. The man in that portrait was one of the Manticore Knights, identified by the patterning on the cape (which were manticores standing up, so it wasn't hard to guess) She closed her eyes briefly, her still romantic mind wondering if such a knight would ever lower himself to carry her off into the setting sun.

"A mysterious name indeed. What does it mean?"

... and the little maid hummed. She always enjoyed humming a little while she cleaned. there was no melody to it, no real thought to her dainty little tune as she enjoyed her admittedly overly-romantic fantasy.

"Jack means Jack? You don't know? How about your family name?"

Siesta cleaned.

The maid cleaned a sputtering face that was still choking on dusty feathers as her absent-minded crusade against dust strayed a little too far from the corner. The young maid squeaked, jumping back far enough to be out of reach before the duster fell to the ground with a clatter, revealing the chiseled features of a roguish young man (she could tell he was young, despite the fact that his gaunt features and ample scarring showed that his apparent age was a good decade more than his actual age), who had rounded the corner with an older mage - a professor - beside him.

With the fear and panic criss-crossing her face and the sensation of suddenly being two inches tall, Siesta's face drained of all color as her eyes bugged out. "I'm so sorry! P-please forgive my carelessness!"

There was the clatter and scrape of the duster being picked up off the stone floor as the maid did her best to disappear without actively running away.

This was it!

Her father had once told her stories of how nobles were horrible people, beating the staff for the simplest of mistakes, even though there were laws now in place to prevent deaths, a whipping or 'simple' punishment was often overlooked as 'appropriate'. In the privacy of their mansions, some did whatever they pleased with the helpless staff, thinking of them as playthings more than people. Siesta prepared herself, closing her eyes and cowering as she awaited the first blow.

Where would the man strike first? Her imagination lead the way. Her face? That strike would be with an open palm, painful as the stinging backhand would send her across the hallway from the sheer power of those well muscled arms. Perhaps she would be taken away? Dragged kicking and screaming off into a private room, where the man would take a whip from an inconspicuous little cupboard, and let its tip run over her bared flesh...

Siesta sensed movement, and squeaked with a little 'kyaaan' as she braced herself for the beating.

"Here."

Huh?

She opened her eyes a peek, and the gawked in surprise. The man... the same young man that had been dusted in the face by her own carelessness was now holding said duster by the feathers, offering the handle end to the younger maid. She looked worriedly at him, and then at the duster. Was this something that they did for fun? Make her relax, and then punish her while she was caught unawares?

"Here." The man repeated. His voice was... unique. It was soft, gentle even, but carried a rough rumble to the man's vocal palette, a throaty growl that made the young maid's spine shiver in fear and, she guiltily admitted, excitement.

"Th-thank you... Ah, I'm so sorry about that!"

Siesta was surprised as the man shrugged awkwardly. "Accident."

And with that, all seemed forgiven. Siesta paused, quite unsure of what to do now. This wasn't in the scenario! What... what kind of a man was this? He wasn't a noble, was he? No, he was too kind compared to the others that she had met (especially the younger ones).

"Uhm... uhm..."

"Are you alright? You seem a little red..." Observed the older of the two men. "Have you been drinking well? Perhaps you might be a little dehydrated..."

Siesta eeped quietly. "N-no! I'm fine! I'm really fine! Uh.. p-please, excuse me!"

Turning to leave, Siesta made herself ready to dash off by bundling up her skirt so that it wouldn't get caught in her legs, and was just about to get started on her escape when she found a strong hand grasp the back of her dress.

Oh dear, this was it! She was going to get carried off, taken to a small room and made into this young noble's plaything! She didn't want to ! Her life was not like A Country Maid in the Hall of the Duke! This would end badly, no matter what those romance novels had said! She lived in reality, dammit!

Even so, a far less inhibited part of her noted that the roguishly handsome man behind her wouldn't be so bad to serve.

"Jack... what are you doing?"

"Catching."

"I can see that, Jack, but she's turned a very bright red in the face... are you sure you aren't choking her or something? I feel very worried abut this girl all of a sudden..."

A shake of the head, the movement transmitted up his arm and directly to her spine. Siesta shivered.

"Well, miss maid, if you'd like to stop for a moment and distract yourself from your duties, it seems that a noble wishes for their clothes to be cleaned, and this man here needs some help..."

Siesta, as the young maid had introduced herself, seemed to be worried. Jack couldn't figure out why. They both squatted by a wash tub, her still blushing face now fixed firmly to the task at hand, and was most definitely not glancing at him every few seconds. He was working his hands over the robe, working at the bottom of the cape to wash off the stains from the grass and dirt the short pinkette accumulated over the course of a day. He dipped his hand again in the soapy water, soaking another part of the hem, and began rubbing it against the washboard, working the fabric until that patch was cleaned.

He let out a sigh, which was the first sound that either of them had made in the past few minutes, and jostled his elbows to roll up his sleeves yet again. The sweater was proving very persistent in wanting to roll back down and cover his arms again, and with his unique scarring Jack was sure that he wanted them to be all covered up. But as he knew, the wool didn't react well with getting soaked in water.

The girl turned to him, still red as an Enrage plasmid, and spoke. Jack had the feeling that she wanted to ask him something. "Uhm..."

His hands worked over her flesh, strong fingers pressing into aching muscles. Tension melted away like ice under the summer sun as his hands wandered over her bare back, his powerful digits playing over her supple skin. The simple maid arched her back from this new pleasure he was giving her, trying not to moan as her body trembled from his roving fingers, the silent master of her body and heart invisible to her as he ministered over her prone form. He had her, and she knew that. Her flesh trembled for his touch, and her body ached for his.

She was under his command, and should his command be 'lie down upon this bed, and make no noise.', then so it would be that she lie down and and make no noise. Struggling to follow his instructions, the maid squirmed as if in pain, though pleasure wracked her body instead. His fingers, though lecherous in the places they now touched, were only giving her pleasure where another man would have evoked disgust from where they now pressed against her flesh.

Unable to resist, she let out a soft cry.

"Ah." Said the master. "You have made noise, my little beauty."

And so, like every other night before, he would punish her.

Siesta frowned. As exciting as that passage had been, Jack didn't quite fit. For example, the man didn't seem to have ever spoken more than two words at a time.

Oh well. He might not fit the character of the Duke, but now she had someone's face to imagine when she started her nightly reading.

Another discrepancy existed in her fantasy world, which cast him as a young noble with amorous attentions towards a young castle maid (i.e. her): The man washed clothes. Siesta felt conflicted, especially since she her image of Duke Jack the Amorous was shattered by this one fact; he would obviously have to be a noble, right? While this 'Jack' certainly had the bearing of one - the mysterious man walked with the confident stride of a man who knew how to handle himself, and from the way he talked to Colbert he knew that the man wasn't bowing down to the senior teacher and (rumoured to be) talented flame mage - it didn't seem as if he was a roguish noble, either. Drat, and she really wanted a face for the Chevalier of the Night.

Jack was instead quiet and detached, as if he were in another world of his own, and a polite and almost shy demeanour - though his stoic lack of words was unsettling - that was so unlike the many other nobles that she had known. Eyeing him carefully, Siesta got to work on the more unmentionable portion of the clothing, making sure to scrub the delicate silk carefully so as not to snap the elastic. Founder alone knew what would have happened to someone who did; especially if the noble in question had found out while wearing the elastic...

Siesta peeked up, her dark hair parting slightly to let her watch the man quietly work over the other sleeve of his mistress' clothes.

"So... are you a personal servant for one of the students?"

"Hmm?"

"You help one of the students?" It was definitely not one of the teachers, and Siesta felt confident with this deduction because a bra was not among the clothes that he had been told to wash - and not to mention that the clothes themselves would be a rather tight fit had she been daring enough to wear them.

A shrug. Jack looked back at her, thinking carefully. He finally answered; "Louise."

Well. That certainly helped! "Uhm... I don't know anyone by the name of Louise, Mister Jack."

A grunt of acknowledgement, then a return to silence as the man continued with his washing. Siesta wondered again. "Is she young?"

"Hmm?"

"The person who owns these clothes."

Jack looked at Siesta blankly, his mind jump-starting from the thought-numbing pleasure of toiling away at the laundry. He had seen tonics and plasmids that would give one a younger appearance, certainly, but as for how the girl acted... well, it seemed like her personality fit her apparent age. Possibly. He had never actually met anyone of that age group before, so he could only assume that the memories that he did have access to were accurate about that particular subject. Well, they had been accurate so far, so there was probably some truth in those 'fake' memories of his.

"I see..." Well, he was most likely not a lover, though she was tempted to fall into that particular fantasy, and didn't quite seem to be 'manservant' because f his attitude and gruff nature...

Just who the hell was he?

A man of mystery... ooooh, this was going to be fun!

Jack had scrubbed and scrubbed and scrubbed until he was fairly certain the clothes were as close to sterile as he could manage. Looking them over, the man handed them over to Siesta for inspection. She cheerfully informed that they were clean, and moved off to have them hanging up to dry.

"Just pick them up before dawn, they should be dry by then!" The chirpy maid had informed him. Jack watched as she then took each article of clothing and pegged them up nearby, where a gentle flame was crackling so that its light was radiating all throughout the room, warming the clothes here so that the heat was already close to drying the clothes that hung on the line.

Other clothes were nearby; robes, shirts, pants and skirts. Jack wondered briefly how many people lived here, and what they were like. Surely not as much as that of Rapture's population? He didn't even know how many inhabited that city any more; there had been so many disappeared, so many dead as well...

Jack shrugged.

"Siesta?" He called out, which made the young maid jump in surprise.

"Y-yes?"

Pausing a little, Jack wondered if it was worth it asking the girl how many people lived here. Instead, the man bowed. "Thank you."

There was a moment where silence retched between the two of them, Jack staring at Siesta as the girl slowly went red, and turned around, holding her cheeks with her hands as she squealed 'kyaaaa' in a long, high and surprisingly quiet scream.

Cautiously stepping away from the gushing maid, Jack slipped off quietly into the night air, back into the dark chill that he was familiar with. Stepping from the warm, humid room into the dry coldness of the night air, Jack let out a long breath and felt his skin tingle as it braced itself against the chilly midnight air.

Time to get back to his... 'master'. Mistress? Master? Wasn't she a girl?

As he walked away from the laundry, Jack found his ability to navigate the halls and corridors, warrens and alleyways of Rapture served him well here also; he caught sight of a few landmarks, the scent of the kitchens, and then set off back to the room.

Along the way, he passed blondie and the younger girl, with the former trying to steal a kiss from the latter. Just to spite him, though Jack didn't know why, he grabbed his wrench and struck the ground, startling the two of them. Slipping away, he disappeared before either could investigate.

Ten minutes later, Jack - the 'Familiar of Louise' - was puzzling over the logic of locking one's familiar outside of your own room after sending him on an errand. Louise had apparently bolted the door closed. Jack tried pulling, pushing and sliding to either side (despite having seen Louise pull the door open from the inside when she had thrown him out. It never hurt to make sure) but found nothing quite worked. Unless...

He peered into the lock, letting his idle Incinerate plasmid light the way for him. In a glance, the mechanics of the lock were comprehended. Forcing the opening of the door was easy; defeating the lock was simple with the use of plasmids with the practical knowledge of mechanics. A quick burst of carefully applied telekinesis popped open the rolling cam and let Jack back into the room. A quick search of the room showed that the girl was already asleep in her bed.

Giving out a sigh, Jack shook his head. Tomorrow was coming fast. He glanced around Louise's room, scanning the walls. Soon enough, the servant of the Mistress Valliere found himself a dark corner, in the shadows of a desk. Removing his harness, he unhitched his wrench, letting it rest on the floor in front of him, inches away from his fingertips as sat down there and curled up, eyes watching both the window and the door carefully as he relaxed, kicking off his shoes and resting his head against the dark wood. Back during the days after the fall of Atlas – who had been better known as Fontaine – had been chaotic and wild. Well, more so than was usual in Rapture. With his radio set smashed in that climactic battle, Jack had lost contact with Tenenbaum several times as the Little Sisters became more hesitant to venture further away from their sanctuary to deliver messages, and even when they were in touch he found it more convenient to sleep in a corner.

It was uncomfortable, but it let him keep on his toes while he was resting, in case trouble came his way.

Quickly, Jack fell asleep, a small part of him acknowledging that this would be the first night away from Rapture. As twisted as that place had been, it was home. He had cleaned that place, with friends and comrades, room by room.

Room by room...

= Rapture, 1959 =

"Boss? Boss, its time to get up."

Jack nodded, rising from his slumber, climbing awkwardly out from behind the safe that he had been using as an impromptu pillow. The stakeout was over, and now was the time for some action. He groped for his pistol, and slipped it into a chest holster. Spare cylinders in his pocket. Wrench in hand, and a quick top up of Eve in front of him, Jack prepared himself.

He checked his surroundings. Across the hallway from him, behind the cover of a pair of barrels, Colin was inspecting each bullet as he loaded the two-pack of twenty-round box magazines for his sub machine gun. The wiry splicer was their newest recruit, and was therefore the least experienced.

Tucker was one of the few splicers who had actual combat experience outside of Rapture; he was a veteran of the 'Second World War', a British man who had fought in Borneo before being brought to Rapture. The warrior of the jungle now fought under the sea, preparing his polished cane-splitter, a short sword in all but name, and then sheathing it on his back.

William hefted his wrench, his right arm buzzing with the electricity of his Electro Bolt plasmid. He pulled out a little bottle of blue liquid, and injected it into his wrist. The lightning storm that was happening inches from his hand intensified for a second before dulling back down.

"Ready, boss? The last of their patrols just went out." Reported Sal, who pumped his shotgun, then loaded the extra shell. "Miss Widow is gonna take care of them with some help from Gordon and Henries. Should we move in?"

A nod. Sal grinned.

"Aw-right then, lets get this show on the road, gentlemen."

They burst into the room, weapons sweeping the floor and walls. A few glanced at the ceiling.

"Watch that desk." Warned Salvatore, raising his shotgun to point at the overturned desks.

The four S's of searching a room; scan for hiding spots, speak to your team-mates, split your responsibilities, survive because you remember the other three S's.

"Ventilation shaft above." Came the clipped warning from the splicer wielding the sub-machine-gun.

The five man team consisted of Jack, Salvatore and his three most trusted security officers. Freed from the mind-control plasmids, the newly formed police force and military of Rapture proved to be both equally brutal and cunning as well as compassionate and friendly when needed to be. Tenenbaum had quietly confided in Jack that they were now seeking redemption for the sins that they had committed, and that he should give them every opportunity to convince themselves that they had earned it.

Tucker found his redemption as a lance of fire scorched his chest and arm, burning through the leather clothing and turning the flesh underneath to ash in the instant it hit him. Steam sizzled off as his body vaporized, and the four remaining splicers turned around, searching for a target.

"What was that!"

"Houdini! HOUDINI!"

The man screaming the warnings was set alight by a burning barrel, which exploded and coated him with burning fuel. With a howl of pain, the man staggered in place, trying to bat out the flames. There was no water in this place, and all knew it. Jack grit his teeth, and then froze the man with a blast of winter ice. His left arm trembled, but he knew that attacking his ally had been the only choice; in a minute, the man would melt out unharmed. Had it been left alone, the flames would have probably spread around the room with his panicked attempts to extinguish the flame, and then he would have died.

"Th-th-thanks." The man managed to grit out. Jack nodded, activated Incinerate! And by using the ambient heat of the idle plasmid began to defrost him, starting with his face, neck and chest; he needed to get breathing again. A blink was the man's return of that gesture.

The Houdini struck again, bolts of fire sizzling through the air. The three splicers that could move ducked aside.

"Boss? What do we do, Boss?"

"Get yer back to a wall!" Snarled Salvatore, already running for one. "Look for red petals! Keep the Boss covered while he defrosts Willy!"

Jack was already freeing the man's shoulder, hand working over Willy's collarbone and melting away the frozen prison that he had been encased in.

There was a hiss of a breath being sucked in, and then a flash of red.

"Colin!" Warned Jack, the slight urgency in his voice shocking the the Splicer into action, with him immediately dropping to the ground.

Jack's pistol had been upgraded further when Rapture RnD had been rebooted, and now he carried six anti-personnel 'plus' rounds; they were a 'bitch' to get hit by.

In as may heartbeats, four .38 caliber Rapture AP Incendiary rounds bored their way into the Houdini, before bursting into flame inside of his body. The man screamed for a brief moment, before two more shots were placed inside of his throat and head. Everyone turned to face the shooter.

"C-c-clear." He stammered, before letting the pistol clatter to the ground.

"Fast." Jack observed, checking under his armpit to find his pistol gone. The splicer had snapped up and fired his pistol, and done so accurately to boot. For a person who had been drooling at the mouth a month ago, that was pretty impressive.

The splicer tried to grin, his cheek still too frozen to pull anything even resembling a smile.

"W-w-we need ta make a water plasmid that don't freeze yer ass off, y'know?" He stammered.


	5. Zero's Disturbed Breakfast

_"Hahahahah! Gotcha!"_

Sal whooped in triumph, and - like the rest of the staff on-hand at the Argus Securities control room - ran at a full tilt as they crowded around the man who was even now suddenly silent. He had - frozen on frame - the face of their leader. All eyes watched as the security camera tracked him. The screen fuzzed for a moment, the room drawing their collective breaths as they waited for the reel to continue on.

Everyone gasped in shock as they saw the portal open up, and Jack walk right into it. He disappeared, the audio picking up a strangled cry of surprise as an arm reached out for a pipe above, and then being sucked in when he failed to reach it.

The portal closed, leaving no trace of Jack Ryan. Sal trembled as he listened to others whisper, theories and confused questions amounting to 'what the hell did I just see?' being passed around. He himself was asking these questions.

"Byrant! BRYANT! Get me Tenenbaum on the horn, and then the rest of the emergency council! Tell them we know what happened to Mr. Jack!"

Sal turned away as the Houdini splicer evaporated in a flash of watery mist. He turned to the others; the core members*of Rapture's citizenry, the scientists and the brightest minds that*were now devoting their time to finding their leader.*The splicer lieutenant*grinned with*an excited glint in his eye. "Now all we gotta do is figure out how to get him back."

= **Louise's Room** =

Louise awoke to the sound of her familiar opening the door, and then closing it again. In drifted the smell that clung to him; she remembered it as the smell of the sea. A long time ago, she had seen that massive expanse of blue water, and the smell had been... sharp. Only know did she finally connect that aroma with the smell that clung to her familiar's clothes. The smell of the salt water...

She had enjoyed that week at the sea...

However, while she had woken up, the youngest daughter of Valliere was certainly yet to get up. The girl was still wrapped in her sheets, her long pink hair curled around the limber frame of the young mage. Tousled strands covered her face like a protective veil, while her arms wrapped around a pillow and pressed it close to her cheek.

Jack sighed, wondering just how much more child-like the girl could be.

As fate would have it, she girl began to grumble and mewl like a puppy that had been poked in the nose.

It was – to put it lightly – absolutely adorable.

That all ended when the events of the previous day rushed into her head, which – to Jack – gave him the same sinking feeling that a previously electrocuted and unhacked turret had just re-activated a few feet behind him. That had never been a good thing, no matter that he had managed to survive them.

Shooting bolt upright, then suddenly on her feet while standing in the middle of her bed, the pinkette pointed an accusing finger towards the man standing a few feet away, who was holding her panties in his scarred hands..

"Y-y-you! What are you doing?"

Ah. It seemed like she had not noticed the neatly folded robe, shirt and skirt on her dresser.

Gesturing towards them, he spoke. "Laundry."

"You pe-" Louise's rant stalled, then halted as she processed what he said. "Wait, what?"

"Laundry." Jack repeated, and for added measure a freshly laundered shirt was held up for her inspection.

As was usual, the little pinkette went pink as she snatched the shirt away from her familiar. "Ah..."

Inspecting it, or at least pretending to, Louise held it out in front of her and found the shirt in surprisingly good condition; pressed and dried with the damp, sweet aroma of the logs that had been burned to dry it still clung to the fabric, replacing the stinging smell of soap and sweat.

Praise be given where praise be earned.

"W-well done, familiar." She stammered out.

Great. Even her familiar had been given more praise than her. At the very least, he was able to do laundry. She, however, was Louise the Zero. Perhaps he recognized that, for now he was frowning in what seemed t o be disappointment on his face.

"Jack." He finally said.

Louise's cheeks brightened as her nostrils flared, her lungs sucking in a deep breath to do one thing she knew she could do well: scream at others. "You are my familiar, and I will call you as such!"

"Jack."

"I said familiar!"

A sigh, then the familiar did an about turn that would have made any sergeant worth his stripes turn red with rage, and marched off with the same sloppy gait as his turn.

"Familiar, you do not simply walk away from your master like that! Now come, I must be dressed before going down for breakfast."

The man simply nodded, and made for the door. Louise sighed.

"Familiar, I mean that you must dress me. A familiar and servant should dress their master when there are no other servants around to do so."

Understanding dawned upon the man, Louise spotting his questioning look as he saw her prepare the clothes that she wanted him to dress her in. The same shirt and skirt from yesterday, as well as the robes. Louise was well aware that this man was about to dress her, despite them only meeting the day before. She wasn't too bothered by it; he was her familiar, not a man. Just a familiar, not a man with family and dependents now missing their older relative.

So long as she repeated that mantra in her head, she was sure that she could get through this without showing him how guilty she was feeling.

"D-dress me, familiar." She stammered.

Jack nodded, and found himself sighing in a mix of frustration and wry amusement. He wasn't sure about her age, but it was definitely older than the little sisters. Even they knew how to dress themselves, simple as their clothes were, and Jack could almost find himself laughing were it not from the fact that he wasn't sure how to express himself in such a way.

The one time that he had laughed, it had almost turned Sal white from fear, with his... augmented... voicebox and the fact that it was a sound so unnatural that even a nearby Big Daddy had paused to stare as Jack had stunned everyone into an embarrassed silence..

Accepting the clothes, Jack held them in place as Louise undressed, and then he dressed her. There wasn't much to it, as there was little thinking in what he had to do; arms should go in sleeves, skirt around waist... He stood behind her as he helped her do so, and even from there could feel the heat of her cheeks as she held out her arms for the first of the clothes. That was the plain shite shirt, which was then tucked into the black skirt. Jack was used to dressing the occasional Little Sister who needed help with their clothes, and simply treated Louise as another one.

He noticed one difference between the two instantly; Louise was tense as a whip-chord, the muscles of her shoulder and arms tight and at times trembling. He found himself wondering what made her so nervous. She was asking him to dress her, so why was she so hesitant about it? Some other time would be better for thinking things through; at the moment, he was more concerned about the fiddly little circle of golden metal that was attached to the about to be clasped about her throat; it wasn't like he wanted to stab this girl in the neck, after all. She might have been able to listen to his thoughts, because as he dressed her with his slow but efficient movements, the girl seemed to relax. After a while, Jack would have found trouble imagining if he were anywhere but back with his Little Sisters, dressing them up for the day...

Finally, the last of the uniform was plucked from the bed. Louise was wrapped her up in the black robe, which was made of a fine material that he had only ever seen in Sander Cohen's Fort Frolic, having raided a tailor shop. It was smooth and silky, and Jack knew instantly that it would be completely waterproof; he had at one time used the cloth as a water skin, and found that not a single drop had leaked until someone had put a crossbow bolt through said skin.

That was held together by a little pin, which rested underneath the metal clasp at her throat.

"Finished." Jack declared.

Louise immediately jumped away as she heard him suddenly speak, something that she still wasn't used to having him do, that he was finished. It annoyed her that she now found her heart still aflutter in her chest. Just what had she been thinking? His touch was most... disgustingly... pleasant. She didn't know any other word for it. His hands were distant and asexual, it wasn't like he was an amorous lech that was groping her but she sill couldn't shake that feeling of nervousness, that this was fundamentally wrong. She found it hard to figure it out, why her body was trembling, why her pulse was racing. Why she found his touch so... so good. It was... comfortable. She found herself unexpectedly relaxed by his touch. Though unusual and coarse whenever his finger touched her skin, Louise found herself unexpectedly relieved by the presence of her familiar.

That, and she was immensely proud of herself that now her familiar was both listening to her commands as well as... well, not complaining about it. She didn't know what she would have done to someone who had not been so compliant.

He fumbled the clasp, his thumb suddenly running up her jaw. Louise wasn't quite fast enough to hid her shiver, and trembled as a jolt went up her spine.

"I'll do it!" She declared hotly, her fingers going to her throat, doing up the pentagram at her throat to clasp the cape around her, adjusting the hood to sit comfortably under her hair, and then adjusting the hair itself.

Louise stretched out her hand, as if awaiting something from the familiar. "Comb." She demanded.

One was handed to her.

As she felt the familiar tug of her comb straightening out her hair, Louise positioned herself in front of the mirror, perched on the small stool. Her eyes drifted from her pink locks to the reflection of her familiar, again re-appraising him as she watched his movements. He was waiting, though if he was being patient abut it she couldn't tell. His eyes were watching the door and the single window of her room. Louise found herself studying his face closely. He wasn't old, nor young. A man in the prime of his youth, almost, though he seemed to have passed that recently. She herself was sixteen, he about ten years her senior.

"Familiar..."

She hesitated.

"Familiar... how old are you?"

Silence.

"Familiar?"

"...Twenty four."

Not quite ten years, concluded the mind of Louise Valliere. Eight years younger than Viscount Wardes, it seemed. She wondered what he would think of Jack, but blushed at the thought. Hurriedly, she picked herself up and walked over to her familiar, discarding the comb as she went.

"We're leaving, familiar."

= Alviss Dining Hall =

"You should count yourself lucky." Called out Louise as she lead her familiar on. "The Alviss Hall is reserved for nobles, and the only way a commoner could come here were if they were the serving staff."

Jack wondered if he was the serving staff, considering that he was her familiar and was now attending to her (after dressing he rin her room). He raked his hair back, and looked around the sumptuous dining hall, with the smells that were so familiar and yet foreign to him. He could smell food, yes, and the aroma of cooked meat was familiar to him. But the texture of the whole hall was so different from that he was used to; there was no stench of rot, no decaying taint to them. Jack could hear the crisp crunch of the greens, where the ones grown in Rapture had been limp and wilted. Such a different place...

He felt unnerved by it.

"Familiar, follow me." Louise instructed, her voice clipped as her eyes searched the halls. They were starting to draw attention now, with more students noticing the man whom Louise had summoned. A few faces were familiar to Jack, the same pale faces that had shrunk back when he had drawn his wrench now looked at him with contempt. Ignoring them, he focused on staying with Louise and keeping up with her as her slender frame allowed her to slip in between people while Jack had to wait for them to move.

"Familiar... you find your own food." The pinkette master instructed. "Go around to the kitchens out back. They don't serve commoners in the dining hall."

Frowning, Jack nodded. Commoners. Well, Jack was anything but common. Grown in a vat, raised to the physical age of nineteen by his second year of life, and then used as a mind-controlled assassin by the very man that had told him that his goal was to keep him alive.

With a cynical twist, Jack knew that he was right; Atlas did want to keep him alive. For his own purposes, sure, but the man did help him out. Most of the time.

"Familiar, do you hear me?"

Jack snapped back to the current reality, and nodded. When Louise had turned around, presumably dismissing him, he left her side to hunt down his own food.

Social graces were not what Jack had been taught very well; he was much better at caving a person's face in than he was at talking to it. He did know, however, about the fact that one should not be eating whatever was left unattended; Jack fought against his instinct to scavenge, the same instinct that had procured him many things that had saved his life on many an occasion. Ammunition hidden inside closets, left on ledges and under floorboards. Food left on tables, weapons squirreled away in the most obscure of places had kept him alive in the harrowing three days that had been the death of Andrew Ryan and the fall of Atlas, better known as Fontaine.

That was why he was wondering what the little bottle was. It had... well, he had probably picked it up off the floor or something, focused as he was on not taking the food on the tables. For all he knew it had been snatched from some unwitting student's fingers. Jack felt the urge to slap himself in the face with the palm of his hand, and then let out a sigh of frustration. He checked the rest of his many pockets for anything else he might have picked up without thinking, and thankfully found that the contents of his pockets (a pep bar, two shells for his pistol, a wrapper for a pep bar, and a bolt from a door he had ripped off some time ago) were the same as when he had entered the hall. Nothing new there.

So now his attention went back to his newly acquired bottle. Someone's newly lost bottle, anyway. It wasn't his. And as soon as he found out what the hell was going on, he could return it to its rightful owner, who was most definitely not hi-

"Oh! Mr. Jacques!"

"Jack." He corrected, if rather hesitantly. Feeling more than a little awkward in a situation that was normally far out of his depth (for a man who had spent most of his waking life at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean, that was quite deep), he remembered that it was polite to acknowledge others by their names - something that he understood, but never really could apply.

"Siesta?"

The girl blushed a bright red, and held the empty tray in her hands, gripping it tightly across her chest. "Oooh, you remembered my name?" She chirped happily.

Bashfully, Jack nodded his head. Siesta seemed to only be encouraged by that. She had her eyes screwed shut now, squeeing gleefully as Jack looked about at the attention he was getting. He didn't like the fact that there were so many people staring now, especially because there were a few scornful looks there as well. Words such as 'indiscreet' and 'inappropriate' were bandied about.

"Siesta?" He whispered, which made the girl even more red. She seemed alarmed and... excited? How odd...

"Oh... I'm sorry, mister Jack. I take it your... mistress was pleased with the laundry?"

"Thanks." Jack nodded his head in thanks, and managed an awkward smile. Be kind to others, said Tenenbaum, and thank them for their efforts. The little girl went a deeper red in the face, ad let out hr now-typical 'kyaaa' as she wiggled back and forth, the metal of the tray warping slightly as she pressed her fingers more tightly to the softer metal.

"So your mistress has abandoned you?" Asked the maid, her tone both seemingly angry and pitying at the same time. Jack wondered – and was worried – about the disappointed look on her face when he shook his head to the negative.

"Oh... uhm..." The silence stretched between the two as Siesta's eyes bounced up and down, capturing the man in his full regalia as he looked at her worriedly. Eyes settled on the bottle in his hands, and she stepped forward, regarding it curiously. "What is that?"

Shrugging, Jack offered the bottle to her for inspection. Siesta struggled briefly with the cork stopper on top, and their immediate surroundings were suddenly filled with the earthy scent of perfume. It was a heady aroma, almost overwhelming with its forceful odor and Jack almost found himself gagging on the sheer weight of the perfume's power. Frowning, he pinched his nose and indicated that Siesta stopper it again.

"That was... quite powerful." The maid gasped, obviously as overwhelmed by the perfume as Jack had been. He had smelled some quite powerful stuff when he had been back in Rapture - the least of which was the scent of a Big Daddy (he himself knew that smell intimately when he had become one, and thankfully the pheromones that he had consumed to smell like one had worn off a few days after his brief stint as a Protector).

Jack nodded in assent, and as about to enlist the maid in helping him to find whoever could tolerate such a scent clinging to themselves. Luckily, he didn't have to wait long as a few minutes later, a new voice joined the two of them.

"Ah, you found it!"

The voice itself was young, and the person who owned the voice matched the mental image that her cry had summoned to the minds of those that heard it. She could have been one of the older Little Sisters, free from a life of living in a nightmare dreamworld and manipulation by those greater than themselves. The girl had dark brown hair, bright green eyes, and a pale, slender frame; she resembled a kitten in so many ways, not the least of which was how the two tails of her hair rose above the back of her head before bowing down to gravity. Her robe seemed slightly worn at the edges, though it was still made of the same high-quality materials. The new arrival's clothes were similarly oversized, as though they had been fitted for someone of larger frame than she.

"I beg your pardon, miss, but... is this yours?" Ventured Siesta. The girl eagerly nodded, sending her hair bobbles bouncing as she held out her hands for the bottle.

"Yes... it was gifted to me by Guiche. He's... well... I think he likes me, so... please, I was ever so worried when I lost it! You don't know how much that means to me! I... He's the first boy who said he likes me, so... I don't want to make him sad..."

"Oh..." Siesta held a hand to her lips, eyes brightening as she processed what the girl had told her. Obviously, her cheeks reddened even more as time passed. Jack slowly inched away, since the fight or flight response typical of his instincts had discounted the flight option as the Siesta and this new girl were helpful to him and reminded him too much of a little sister, respectively.

"I see..." Siesta smiled, and offered the perfume to the younger girl, who smiled brightly as she reached out for it. "Well, here it is, then. I'm sorry to have tr-"

"Now wait just this minute!" Screeched the fourth voice in the conversation. Jack looked up, and saw another girl approaching. She was, to put it simply, furious. He reached for his wrench, and tightened his grip on it, ready to tug it free from its leathery nest.

It was a girl he recognized, a person from his summoning. Seeming to be of about the same age as Louise, who had called the girl Montromercy 'the flood'. He turned to face the girl. She had her hair arranged into long streaks of blond that had been curled into what resembled a pair of cylindrical drills. A rose-red bow tied off the rest of her hair, which was similarly arranged. Milky white skin was almost shining as she let the sun fall across her face, and her bright blue eyes belied a rage that was already familiar to Jack; a burning indignation that he had seen previously in Louise.

"Who are you two commoners, to be wearing the perfume made exclusively by me, Montromercy the Fragrance? Not mention one that I had made for my beloved Guiche? And just who are you, to claim that it was a gift from him?"

There was another indignant huff from the girl, who then finally deigned to give the two a full inspection.

"You." She growled, pointing an accusing finger at the girl. "This was stolen, am I right?"

"N-no, it... it wasn't! It was given to me by Guiche, just last night he let me have it!"

"Shut up! Of course it was stolen, there is no way my man would have let the perfume out of his grasp, unless..."

Another revelation seemed to brighten her eyes, which turned it into a dangerous glint when she jabbed her finger at the girl again. "You little minx, you trash-born little flake! Trying to seduce my man!" She whirled around, and shouted out to the crowd behind her. "Guiche! Guiche da Garmont! Where are you!"

"Oh no..." Whimpered Siesta. "Oh no oh no oh no..."

"What is it, my dearest?"

"Guiche!" Shrieked the girl.

The blond haired boy seemed surprised by the sudden appearance of the younger girl. "K-katie!"

"So you know this girl?" Inquired Montromercy, her eyes blazing as she stepped forward, fury already blazing around her like an aura of fire. "She says that the bottle of perfume that I made for you was given to her. Now tell me that this isn't true."

"Guiche! This... this girl made you the bottle?"

"P-please, ladies..."

"Guiche! Tell me you didn't give this to her!"

"I'm sorry! I dropped it and the maid found it and... Guiche!"

"You shameless..."

"I thought you loved me, Guiche! You said so yourself, didn't you, after I gave you my first kiss..."  
"Her... her first... you! Why you little..."

Two very loud slaps echoed through the suddenly still hall. Both were from the hand of Montromercy the flooding fragrance. The blond haired boy staggered back, eyes dilated into little pinpricks as his cheek slowly went red. Katie seemed to dissolve, her cheeks already soaked with her tears as she fell to her knees, sobbing uncontrollably as Guiche fell into one of the long benches that lined each table. Siesta was trembling, taking a tentative step back as the blond haired girl stalked off, screaming litanies of hate and fury as she promised some very unpleasant things.

"K-katie?" Siesta ventured, grabbing a cloth from one of the tables, and kneeling down beside the stunned student.

"Guiche... Guiche..." Her soft voice was so very pained, Jack felt heat rising up his neck and warming his cheeks as he watched the little girl weep into the comforting strangeness that was Siesta's arms. The maid was crooning softly to her, quietly trying to comfort Katie as she dabbed away tears with the cloth.

Guiche stood back up, and spotted the dark-haired maid.

"You." He growled. "You are the cause of all this!"

This was getting ridiculous. Jack could have almost groaned in the stupidity of it all, recalling a few spats from his Rapture days, which were nasty enough without the plasmid-enhanced participants.

Guiche was apparently preparing to launch into a triage of his own, and Jack could understand the wounded heart of a shameless bully and cheat. He took a step forward and whopped the blond upside the head. Hitting people wasn't quite as effective as talking him down, but in his experience doing so tended to shock them back to reality long enough for him to get some sense into them. And anyway, he didn't like talking to this guy. He had hurt Katie, and Jack found it a good excuse to vent his current frustrations.

"Wrong." He sighed, and turned the young boy around to face him.

What greeted him was certainly shock, but also a good measure of rage. Jack frowned, wondering what had gotten this boy so worked up. It wasn't until then that he noticed the sudden deadly silence that had again enveloped the hall; even his master was now wide-eyed and had her hands raised up to her lips in a horrified gasp. Siesta dropped the napkin, and even Katie stopped her crying to stare, goggle eyed, at Jack as he casually manhandled the younger boy.

"You dare..." Guiche snarled. "You dare... you dare strike a noble, filthy commoner? First, I am embarassed by a misunderstanding, and now some commoner finds it funny to simply slap me when I am not looking?"

"Mhmm."

Siesta paled.

"Then, commoner, I shall take your insult as a challenge to a duel."

People around them shouted, all too indisctinct for Jack to pick out individually, but all of them were a mix of encouragement, indignation, and in some cases pleas for mercy. Katie squeaked, and then jumped up, breaking free of Siesta's grip. Guiche silenced her with a glare.

"Duel?" Jack queried.

"A fight, commoner. That should be a simple enough term for you." Sneered the younger boy. There were a few sniggers from the crowd. "A noble crossing of arms, a formal challenge for the honor of two women who had been tricked by a lowlife such as yourself. If you ever could conceive in that simpleton mind of yours such a fight as that, then that would be a duel."

In response, Jack unhitched his wrench, and prepared to bring it down on the boy's head. Shouts and screams made him instinctively stop.

"You want to start a fight here, in this sacred hall of peace? What a barbarian you are." The boy spat. "It shall seem that I will have to teach you a lesson."

Jack shrugged, and lowered his wrench, confused. The boy had wanted a fight. He had been prepared to give him one. What was so wrong with that? He knew that they had seen something wrong in his actions... but what?

"I shall meet you outside, commoner." Declared Guiche. "And you shall know fear."

* * *

**Guiche fight! Guiche fight!**

As always; review if you enjoyed this, I love the feedback!


	6. Zero's Elemental Roulette

**GUICHE FIGHT GUICHE FIGHT GUICHE FIGHT!**

**Don't let me hold ya back. Enjoy~**

* * *

"I shall see you at the Vestry Court, barbarian. If you are lost, its that place out there." The boy made a flamboyant gesture with his rose, and then stalked off to the echo of his fellows' laughter.

Siesta was pale, and trembling. The tray had long ago fallen free of her grasp and was now rolling up the aisle made of tables and shocked students. She looked up at him, eyes wide and framed with tears. Her lips were moving, making soft mewling sounds, but nothing coherent. The maid gasped for a breath, before settling back down, shaking.

Katie was looking up at him in a mix of confusion, fear and... something else. Jack knelt down, and offered her a hand. She scampered away, before disappearing into a clutch of sympathetic friends.

"What are you waiting for, you vagrant? I've given you all but a written invitation!" More laughter.

Jack arched an eyebrow as the boy retreated, wondering if there would be more commotion if he had opted to simply crisp the guy with a blast of Incinerate!. Deciding against that course of action, the older of the two duelists turned away and started checking through his supplies; he found himself half-thankful for the fact that most of his armory was back at Rapture, since now he didn't have to reload all of his guns and other 'bits and bobs'. Settling back down, checking himself, Jack closed his eyes and concentrated slightly. On the inside of his eyes, he started seeing a large blue bar stretching across his vision. _EVE is okay, though a little short... hmm, may need a top-up._ Finding himself picking through his pockets, Jack pulled out, tore through and started chewing on a pep bar, feeling the traces EVE soaking into him as he enjoyed what could have been the last pep bar he would have for a long while.

"Familiar! What are you doing, just _eating_ like that?"

Said familiar found himself frowning a little. Meals like this were meant to be enjoyed! He wasn't going to be denied his food!

But the girl had a good grip on his hand, and Jack sighed as he allowed himself to be pulled along, further up the aisle of bewildered onlookers as they tried to rationalize what they had just seen. Whispers followed them, most asking who exactly Jack was. Theories of him being Louise's servant, lover, a wandering rogue or even an actor were passed along. He didn't have the time to answer them, because Louise was now pushing her way past a crowd trying to make their way out to the court.

"We need to hurry." She hissed, tense as a crossbow's string when pulled back. Louise was... worried? About what? Jack tapped her on the shoulder, and looked around.

"Where?"

"To Guiche, of course! Dimwit, what were you thinking, slapping him like that! Of course he was going to take it as a challenge!"

"Idiot." Explained Jack, nodding as he made to follow the blond outside.

"No! I mean... yes! He is a stupid skirt chaser, but... gaaah, I give up! You think you're going to be facing him with fists? He'll use magic, that's what! Guiche might even kill you! You struck him, so its more than reasonable... But we need to apologize! If you do, Guiche may just let ou off with a warning, or even a simple beating... what's with that look? You think you're going to win against him!"

Jack nodded simply as he made his way clear of the twin-door bottleneck, and checked that his wrench was still in its place. He pulled it free of its harness, and began to inspect his most trusted weapon. "Yes."

"You might be able to beat him with that thing, but not if he has magic!" Louise screeched. "What are you going to do about that?"

"Plasmids." Jack explained.

"Plasmid! What in the Founder's name is a plasmid? You think they're going to help!"

He looked at her, his own bewildered expression not quite as emotional as her own, but effective at relaying his confusion nonetheless. "Yes."

She stopped him, causing another person behind Jack to crash into his back. He ignored the short, blue haired girl as he paid more attention to the pinkette in front of him.

"Oh, and why is that?" Louise drawled, jabbing a finger into his chest. "Is this plasmid of yours so effective?"

"Plasmid_s_." He repeated, emphasizing the plural in a rare case of verbal inflection.

"How, exactly?"

The splicer familiar shrugged. "They work."

Louise gawked at him, slack jawed and bewildered as she tried to comprehend what exactly had her familiar been smoking.

"And what have they worked on before? Magi? Because that's what you're facing!"

Jack scratched at his chin, thoughtful for a moment. "Big Daddies."

"There you go on about those _Big Daddies_ again! Brimir's sake, you're going to _die_ if you try and fight him!"

"... Louise."

"I mean, what do you think you're going to do, brain him with that mace you carry around!" Louise suddenly realized that their surroundings had gone quiet. "What, what!"

Master and familiar looked around them, the two having drifted from the Vestry Court right into the middle of their dueling ground, breaking through the ring of students that had given them no resistance as the two had argued back and forth. Jack palmed his face, and shook his head as he realized how stupid the two of them would have looked.

**= Old Osmond's Office =**

"Old man Osmond! Old man Osmond!"

"Yes, can I help you, Professor?"

"There's a student that's challenged a commoner to a duel!"

"Oh my... then you must go break it up. We can't have him beating the poor thing..."

"I'm exactly worried about that, sir. I mean, mages wouldn't' stand a chance..."

"I beg your pardon, Colbert?"

"The commoner is Miss Valliere's familiar. You know. _Gandalfr_."

The leggy secretary dropped the clutch of files in her arms.

"Oh my... are you sure about this?"

"We'll know for sure if that man gets a hold of a weapon."

**= Vestry Court =**

"So... uh... you finally showed up, huh?" He seemed rather unsure of the situation, as anticlimactic as Jack's entry to the ring had been, his prepared speech seemed to have died at his lips. Good. Jack really, really didn't like long speeches. It made him want to fall asleep. Checking his EVE one last time, the splicer stood in front of Jack, and unhitched his wrench.

"Well... hmm... uh... drat, I had a speech all worked out..." Guiche upped the volume of his mutterings. "You vagrant rogue! Insulting the honor of two women, and slandering me, Guiche da Garamont! You have some nerve, commoner scum!"

Louise shot up like a launched grenade, her cheeks flared red like a proximity mine. "Hey! Don't you insult my familiar like that! Now stop this at once, Guiche! This has gone too far!"

"Miss Valliere, you must be quite naïve to misunderstand the insult that your commoner has given the nobility of this fine academy. First, he reduces a first-year to tears with lies, and then causes a second, a bright star of beauty," Guiche smiled and gestured at the only one of the two girls that had been referred to, who still crossed her arms in fury. The lip-service seemed to be working on the girl. "that is even now anguished at even the suggestion of such a thing. He then slapped me. A commoner laying his hands on a noble like that simply must be punished, and I am generous enough to give him a chance to defend himself and his masculinity by offering him a duel."

"This duel will be one sided and you know it, Guiche! You idiotic skirt chaser! Don't you know that duels are forbidden?"

"Of course I do, but duels are between two nobles, not a commoner and one such as myself. And may the loser beg for forgiveness." Sneered the boy. "What say you, brute?"

Jack sighed, and settled his wrench on his shoulder. "Fight."

"Stupid familiar! Just listen to your master and give up! There's no way you can win against him!"

"See, commoner? Even your mistress recognizes the stupidity of your actions."

Jack bristled at that.

Louise, however, seemed to seize the chance for forgiveness. "Then just let him apologize and be over with it!"

"Fine, if you must so insist, Louise." Drawled the blond fop. "And for you to yield this duel, here are my terms. First, this brute must apologize for insulting the honor of two fine women. Second, he will apologize to me for striking me."

"Sounds fair enough..."

"But that's not all, Louise the Zero." Laughed Guiche. "You must also pay your price."

There was a sudden intake of breath.

"Admit that you are Louise the Zero, that you aren't any use! That insult you offered me earlier must also be remedied. How say you? Kneel, Zero, and beg for forgiveness. Your 'familiar', too."

The entire Vestry Court stood still for a moment, as Louise whirled around to look at Jack, and the other stared at her. The pinkette would not meet his eyes, but instead turned to face Guiche.

"This is for your own good, familiar. You should count yourself lucky." She gave out a bitter cough. "The only way I'd do this for a commoner is if he were my familiar. Guiche Da Garamont! Listen well!"

The boy folded his arms.

"I... I am Louise the Zero!" She shouted out, mortified and close to tears. There were a few shouts, supporting both Louise and Guiche.

"Go on." Sneered Guiche, inching forward, though it was obvious he was growing impatient. "What, Louise, you can't even go through with an action you have committed to? How pathetic. _Would you kindly_ just admit your uselessness, Louise the Zero!"

There was an almost audible crack in the air. Jack suddenly went to confused and rather apprehensive to something more akin to a strung bow, his posture suddenly changing from detached to defensive.

Would. You. Kindly.

Put together, they were the three most hated words that he had ever known.

His pinkette master hesitated, before sucking in a shuddering breath. "I am..."

"Louise." Jack growled, interrupting her.

His voice was deep, menacing. Louise froze in place as his hand settled on her shoulder, pushing her backwards as he walked past her, and raised his wrench at Guiche, still advancing. "We fight."

"So we shall fight, then? Fine, have it your way." He brandished his rose. "I am Guiche Da Garmont, my runic name is 'the Bronze'. As such, I shall fight with bronze golems as my weapon and your opponent."

The petal detached itself, and landed on the ground. A slender figure rose from the ground, metal shaped like liquid as the form compiled itself into a figure, though its shoulders and head were armor-like in shape, the rest of the statue was undoubtedly female. Jack shivered instinctively, remembering the plaster-splicers. Silent, unlike the other splicers that he had encountered, and utterly devoted to trying to kill intruders within their domains. They had lost so many to those plastered ones, trying to clear out Fort Frolic once more...

"They are my golems, the bronze fist of the Garmont family!"

Guiche's single bronze golem shot forward as Jack charged, trying to get as much distance between himself and Louise as possible. Its right fist shot out, trying for a chest-shot, but Jack easily side-stepped it, and then delivered a crushing blow to the back of its head. He mused at the slowness of the enemy, being far too used to the thuggish pipe-wielding cannon fodder creeping up on him from all angles. Lead-headed splicers simply kept their distance and behind cover, while the spider splicers bouncing all over the place made things even more difficult for him to handle. This slow bronze statue was a relief to him, actually.

And yet, it disconcerted him as his wrench struck home. The feedback he got from the wrench was like hitting a Big Daddy, and at the same time so unlike hitting a Big Daddy. His arm protested, the jarring impact almost knocking the wrench free of his grasp, and the wrench recoiled as Jack sprung back from the counter-attack. A distinct ringing sound alarmed him. It was hollow?

The hollow golem turned around, its head almost crescent shaped from the blow that had connected. Not enough focus to the blow. He needed something sharper. Jack began to work at the threaded cylinder at the side of the wrench, extending the jaws of the steel club as he and the bronze statue circled.

"Such strength..." Mused a voice.

Jack prepared himself again.

Guiche was getting more frustrated as the splicer stepped back from a sweeping kick, and then stepped aside another clumsy grab. "Go! Strike him down!"

Jack sprang back, putting distance between himself and the golem as it charged again, utterly silent in all but its footfalls. He stepped into the blow, almost flowing around it as he made sure that he was simply not where the bronze construct struck, and then he hit it again; this time, an entire section of its armor caved in. A second blow struck it, the pointed beak of the upper jaw puncturing the bronze 'skin', ripping and tearing through the thin outer layer of bronze and into the hollow space inside. Gripping the wrench, Jack grunted as he pulled it free, the arm following as the rend in the armor tore the limb off.

His arms were racing as his tonics pumped his body full of adrenaline and chemical stimulants. There was no doubt in his mind that without the Jockey tonics coursing through his bloodstream and into his muscles, he wouldn't have been able to tear through the bronze.

He struck again; two, three more swings were made, lightning fast as the man tore into the golem, stunned into immobilization by the inaction of its puppeteer.

"Im... impossible." Stammered Guiche. "Take this!"

Three more were summoned, their forms the same as the first. Jack turned around, his wrench idly swinging in an almost whimsical pattern as he waited patiently for the new golems to arrive.

When the four combatants met, it was like water meeting stone. The man seemed to flow like the sea around rocks, simply sliding past each blow as the golems tried to punch or kick at him. His movements carried him in a circle, dodging each punch and clumsy grab while – like the metaphorical sea – his wrench would strike like an iron snake, whipping out and nipping a chunk of bronze away. Soon he was fighting two, the third collapsing from a combination of the sheer stresses that Guiche was demanding of it on the much reduced strength of the metal.

After another series of strikes, there was only one as Jack brought down his wrench on the second golem, his wrench tearing its chest open in a scene reminiscent of a carrion bird ripping into a carcass.

And then, there were none. Jack deflected a blow and tore off the last one's leg with the wrench, shards of metal flying off as he pulled the wrench out, dragging it across the thin layer of softer bronze.

Guiche growled, and detached a new petal, to the sound of jeers from his 'friends' and the other academy students.

"You're pretty good, I'll admit to that! But these are mere constructs, imitations of my true Valkyries!"

This time, it was a single golem. Guiche sneered as the metal took form. It was another female knight, but this time it was more well armored; metal strips formed a hinged skirt that half-covered a pair of jointed greaves. The rest of the details were lost to Jack as he spotted the broadsword in its hands.

"This is my Bronze Valkyrie, brute. Know it well, for few have had the honor of fighting my creations."

Jack attributed that to the lack of enemies that Guiche was willing to face...

Louise screeched as she tried to enter the ring of combat, only to be stopped by a pair of sympathetic students. "Guiche! You'll kill him!"

"Don't worry, I made the sword blunt, so it'll only break bones." Grinned Guiche. "I promised you fear, and so you shall kn-"

***CLANG***

"What in Brimir's name was that!"

Jack had shot forward as Louise and Guiche had argued, and struck the new golem in the face. He kicked off the Valkyrie's chest, sending it back at a stagger as he switched his wrench arm to his other hand. Okay, he managed to dent the Valkyrie's face, but it seemed that this one was solid. He knew that now because his hand was hurting from the recoil of the blow. Stepping back from it, he ducked under the blind blow that swept over him, and then skipped back another step when it chopped down from above.

He grit his teeth, his right arm still buzzing from the shock of the strike. He had assumed that this one was hollow, as well. Too bad.

Time for a change in tactics, then.

The Valkyrie swung back, ready to bring down the broadsword, and Jack rolled out of the way.

"What, can't do anything but run, now? You think you're so tough now, huh?" Jeered Guiche. "Can't even take a single golem on, you pathetic little commoner! Those ones you fought are like paper dolls compared to this masterwork!"

He waved his hand, sending another petal towards the ground, ready to form a second Valkyrie.

This wasn't good. He wouldn't be able to handle two with just his wrench. Economy of force was the dictate of this particular splicer, and he didn't want to waste his EVE. But if he didn't spend it, this would get painful.

Jack switched hands again, his left arm clenching as he cycled through his available plasmids. It was like the world stopped for a moment, and the cylinder of a revolver was suddenly in front of him, the buttons for each plasmid hovering before him.

Taking his pick, he grit his teeth as the plasmid activated. Spikes of ice burst out from under his arm, the bloody needles already pink with the blood that had been torn free as well. His hand grew cold, pale and sickly even as the air around it condensed into little icicles. He let out a sigh as the pain faded away, and pointed his hand at the Valkyrie.

The surge of Jack's winter ice froze it and the ground between them, a sudden frost freezing the grass into a triangle of white as the ambient heat was sucked away. Having been in a dead run when it was blasted with the frost plasmid, the momentum of the Valkyrie tilted it over as its legs locked up into a solid mass, sending it crashing to the ground.

Guiche's second Valkyrie failed to form past what looked to be a lumpy bronze brick, which dropped to the ground with a heavy thump at his feet. It proved to be very soft, and deformed as it hit the grass.

"N... no way..."

Silence reigned in the ring of students as the splicer pumped his fist, cycling through to his second plasmid. Ice melted and water evaporated as burns began to appear along his arteries, the white-hot glow of supercharged EVE filling his veins. With the upgraded plasmids that he had been using when fighting Fontaine, Jack had learned that they were horribly inefficient in their default states. He learned that simply waving your hands was a disgustingly wasteful way of expending EVE. That was why Houdinis could send little pellets of fire all over the place; they had been learning how their plasmids worked. Jack, on his first day free of Fontaine, had started learning how to use them.

For example; _Incinerate!_. It was a perfectly good flamethrower in its default state, but when one wanted precision...

Well. Use two fingers.

Jabbing the two digits – his index and middle finger – forward, Jack felt his EVE boil in his blood, and this gesture sent a small shaft of fire, no wider than his thumb, which still carried all the intensity of the original plasmid. Ice and bronze melted together as one, the searing heat bisecting the prone golem from head to the base of its armored skirt.

He turned to Guiche, and closed his eyes. EVE consumption was... minimal. Enough to put a dent on his supply, but a good tradeoff. Still running on a full tank, he let the flames idle around his fingers, the burned and charred flesh flexing as if it were healed.

Turning to Louise, Jack held up a hand, still alight with his plasmid.

"Plasmid_s_." He echoed his earlier statement, again emphasizing the plural.

The pinkette was stunned. Though thoroughly incompetent at using magic, she knew the theory back to front. An ice spell required a line-class mage able to stack the elements of wind and water. Something that only one of the students at this academy could manage. As well as that, he had then struck with a fire spell so concentrated that it could only have been a line or better class spell...

That meant...

A red-headed student let out a strangled cry. It was filled with surprise, fear and... interest? "He's a mage!"

"Two... no, three elements?" Puzzled out a second. "_Triangle class_?"

"Are you stupid?" Barked Louise. "That second spell had to be line class! Casting so close together... he's gotta be a square!"

"Im... impossible! Louise summoned a mage!"

"Wanna say that again, huh!"

"Where's his wand? Where is his wand!"

"That thing in his hand, of course! Look at it!"

"Did you hit your head something? He didn't even incant anything!"

"Is someone helping him, I wonder?"

"Guiche! _Look out!_"

Jack kicked Guiche to the ground, sending the boy across to the edge of the ring.

The earth mage stood up, waving his rose back and forth. He summoned a pair, then a quartet of Bronze Valkyries. That was his limit as a dot-mage. Standing back as the four solid enchanted golems drew their weapons, ready for combat. Two sword-and-shield combos, one spear and an axe. Jack sighed, and sprung back as a spear-tip plunged into the ground where he had been standing.

He pumped his fist once more, cycling through to his next set of plasmids. The first golem was frozen in place with a second blast of winter ice. An advancing golem was thrown into the air as a whirlwind appeared underneath it, and then lost its arm landed on top of the first, the metal shattering from the stress of the impact.

It lost its head as Jack shot it with a stab of his fingers.

A cheer rose up from the assembled students.

The third reached him, and Jack's blazing fist punched clean through it as he wrapped his fist in radiant heat, then smacked it away with a blow from his wrench. Finally, a golem landed a hit; its shield rammed him, sending the splicer to the ground as he was distracted with pulling his arm out of the Valkyrie's chest. Taking the blow into his movement, Jack tumbled across the ground as the golem's sword plunged into the earth.

"Familiar!" Louise's strangled cry cut through the haze of pain as he fought to recover. "Jack!"

Hah. She finally called him his name.

Though in pain, the splicer rolled back up to his feet. He looked at the four golems, now circling around him as he stood at the center of the ring. Missing an arm or head, dented beyond recognition or half-melted as they were, the Valkyries were still ready to fight. Jack searched his surroundings, calculating as his eyes took in the buildings around him, the crowd that was even now backing away, and the four Bronze Valkyries that were approaching him, hemming him in with their shields.

"Are you ready to surrender yet, you oaf? Wouldn't you just give up!" Screamed Guiche.

Jack let his wrench fall to the ground, and then set a knee beside it as he raised his arms.

"Jack?"

"Mr. Jack!"

"Oh my..."

They blazed with fire. Two fingers outstretched, he spun around in a circle. The accompanying lances of red heat sliced through the four Valkyries in the blink of an eye, bisecting them at the waist. Their shields fell away, melted in half. Spear shafts were broken, axes beheaded and armor cut through in a cascade of molten bronze.

The four Valkyries fell apart, collapsing into pools of bronze.

"What! Im... impossible!"

Summoning up his willpower, Guiche created more and more golems; they were crude constructs compared to the Valkyries, or even the first golem that he had faced. Earth formed to a vaguely man-shaped lump, and armor also coalesced into hollow constructs so crude that Jack could see through them. In all, almost a dozen golems now stood between him and the boy. It seemed that Guiche had finally understood that he could bury the splicer under a crowd of earthen constructs, while still hiding behind them.

"Now you shall know pain, insect!"

Wait... insect?

The splicer began to laugh. It started as a chuckle, then rose into a loud, booming sound that chilled the atmosphere as surely as a blast of ice. His augmented voicebox flexed and hummed as the man laughed, the unnatural sound freezing his opponent into place.

"Wh-what's so funny, huh?" Demanded Guiche, stomping on the ground.

The splicer raised his arm. "Insect?"

Jack pumped his fist again, instantly remembering why he hated using this plasmid. Holes opened up in his arms, each wide enough to fit a finger in. He grunted from the pain, even more so as he began to feel his flesh being re-formed to create the bees that now crawled from the newly made orifices. There were gasps of surprise, disgust. Jack ignored them as he watched the golems. A mop of blond hair was just barely visible.

_"Insect."_

He spread his arms, and let loose the hive.

Guiche knew pain. He had been struck before, by his sword master, the man who taught him the art of using blades in battle. Scrapes, bruises, he thought he knew pain as he rubbed salve over purple flesh.

It was only now that he really reassessed that statement as the bees zipped above and around the golems, which were to slow to even dream of intercepting them. They buzzed around him, a primal stab of fear clenching his heart. Guiche staggered back, and tried to shield himself with an arm as the cloud of bees descended upon him. Suddenly, all his world was pain. A hundred needles were being pressed into his skin as his eyes filled with streaks of yellow, each stinging stab of the bees numbing another part of his body.

He could only scream, and try to bat away the stinging insects.

Cries of alarm, pity and shock were raised, and Guiche struggled on the ground. His chest, his face and his arms were like they were on fire, although his legs and back were untouched thanks to the clothes he wore over them.

"FAMILIAR! Stop this at once! Familiar! JACK, STOP IT, NOW!"

His vision flashed. A man in his hands. A splicer in his hands. A monster in his hands. Hands. Neck. Hands. Strangling. Pipes. Walls. Floors. Crashing...

Tenenbaum.

Jack snapped his fingers, the loud click echoing across the walls as he called off his bees – only a short five seconds after they had first touched him - as the focus of the mage broke, the spells holding together earth and metal crumbling along with the constructs.

Turning around, he faced Louise. She had physically pushed two students to the ground in her rush forward, knocking the two flat onto their backs as she shoved them aside. Face red, tears almost forming in her eyes, she now stood in the ring of battle.

"Fa... Jack..."

He walked past mounds of dirt, and pushed over a bronze armor as it fell to its knees in front of him.

Towering over the writing mass of flesh that was Guiche. Jack pulled him up.

"Hurts?" He asked.

There was a soft whimper from the boy. "Aaaugh..." He raised the flower in his hand.

The splicer raised his wrench.

"Yeelduh! I yeeld!" He cried out.

"Apologize." Jack growled.

More sobs. Tears were forming in his eyes. "Soh... sohreh..."

He shook his head, and turned Guiche around to face Louise, Katie and Siesta. "Them."

Dragging the boy to the girls, Jack planted him on his knees, letting him fall forward to collapse at their feet. All three recoiled from the sight of the boy, who had been reduced to this mass of pus and swollen flesh.

"Louise." Jack advised him, seizing the back of his collar to point him at the girl.

"Vahl... Vhalleere... sohreh..."

He picked out Siesta from the crowd, and pointed her out to the boy.

"Meh... mehd... so... sohreh..."

Katie was now pointed out. Guiche's sobs intensified for a moment before he bowed down before the younger girl.

"Khaytee... sohreh."

Now crying openly, Guiche slumped over as Jack released the back of his clothes, falling to the ground and then curling up into as little a ball as he could form, struggling to keep away from the man who had so thoroughly humiliated him.

The splicer nodded in approval, and then turned to the girls. Seeing that he was asking for their approval, the three quickly nodded and turned away.

"Good."

"Hey! What about me?"

"What?" Asked Jack, glaring at the drill-haired blond who had spoken up.

"Uhm... nevermind..."

Kneeling down, he inspected the wounds on the boy. His face was probably going to be ruined for the next week or two; the usual dosage of the bees' poison would have taken a few more seconds before they would have fully taken effect, so this boy was going to be tender for a while. His hands were a lumpy mess, as was his chest.

His hard, unforgiving eyes met the younger boy's. "Never again."

"R-righ'..." Mumbled the blond bumpy thing.

"Good."

** = Old Osmond's Office =**

The three observers gawked at the scene of carnage; chunks of earth and metal were easily re-imagined as masses of flesh, and the destruction perpetuated across the entire school. Shocked silence reigned.

Cautiously, as if afraid of directing the attention of a man almost a two hundred meters and twelve layers of protective spell warding away, there was a hoarse whisper."

"So... does this answer our questions? Is this man Gandalfr?"

"I'm not sure... all I can see is that he definitely is no familiar I have ever seen before." Muttered the scholar. "I don't know... I just don't know."

* * *

**You guys should know the drill by now. If you enjoy, review!**


	7. Zero's Interrogation Revelations

**_Here's the next chapter, which now departs from canon. I'll be dipping back into the original story every now and again, but we're not here for Zero no Tsukaima with Saito renamed as Jack, are we?_**

* * *

"Jack!"

The man slugged him across the face. Well, slapped was a more accurate description.

It was a desperate move, and the armored shell tonic soaked up most of the punch. Jack held on. Blubbering, sobbing, the man fought as the scarred hands tattooed with chains curled around his neck, squeezing the airway shut. The man had thrown away his weapon earlier in the fight, and had stood still while Jack had advanced, and now he would pay for that mistake.

"Jack, stop it, now!"

He was starting to gurgle, blood and foam forming at his mouth as Jack savaged the man's throat. The splicer kicked and struggled, but the iron grip of the younger man's fingers were slowly choking his strength away. Jack grit his teeth, and brought his head forward, stunning the man as the two rolled across the bloodstained floor. Objects were grabbed as the man's free arm – the other being trapped between the two of them – and smashed over Jack's head and back in another desperate attempt to get him to let go.

"Jack, the man has surrendered!" Tenenbaum shrieked. "_JACK_!"

Holding the sobbing Little Sister in her arms, Tenenbaum turned around and snapped orders to the waiting Big Daddy, who was crouched at the entrance of the splicer's lair.

"Listen to me, _bitte_!" Overriding its compulsion to protect the Little Sister that was now perched atop its shoulders, the armored giant perked up as it listened intently. "Sigma Four, new orders: separate the two men, but do not harm them."

The Rosie-type Big Daddy rumbled as he stepped forward, both his armored fists (lacking the drill usually deployed with the Big Daddies) clapping together in a unique expression of pre-battle stress, the Bouncer walked over to the two men.

It reached down, and found itself grabbing nothing but air.

Jack had kicked at a wall, sending the two grappling splicers across the floor, rolling on cigarettes and bottles, he rode the inertia of their slide to slam the man into the opposite wall. He rolled again, mounting the splicer as he picked him up by the neck, and then slammed the back of his head against the floor.

The Big Daddy made another grab for the two men, only to find its fingers kicked away as Jack pulled the struggling splicer up and across, batting the Rosie away.

He slammed the man against the wall, and then threw him across the room as Sigma Four made another lunge for the two of them.

Screaming as his airway was cleared, the man sailed through the air, bouncing off the table. Jack lunged, and picked up a bloodstained length of rope, coiling it around in his hands.

Avoiding the Rosie's grab, Jack caught the man as he tried to scramble away from him.

The ground shook as a second Daddy was thrown into the mix.

"Rho Eight! New orders; assist Sigma Four and separate the two men, but do not harm them!"

Jack climbed over the much more clumsy Bouncer as the man ran past it, the bars that stretched across the front of its helmet – a protective measure – making perfect handholds as the more agile of the two Protectors vaulted over.

He sought his prey, who was throwing aside an armchair as he made his escape. The splicer turned around, having recovered a candlestick as an impromptu weapon.

The man on top of the Big Daddy pounced.

Both went down as the candlestick was smashed away, then the coil of rope wrapped around the man's neck.

Jack slammed into the ground, his fingers tight around the garotte. His eyes darted around, and a second throw sent the splicer into a shallow pool of water. Leaping on top of him, the man pressed his attack, forcing the man's face into the puddle, tightening his grip as the water churned with breath and blood.

There was a sudden rocking of the ground, the floorboards screaming as they were stressed. Two massive hands grabbed onto his arms, and wrenched the two men up. In a gentle yet deceptively forceful set of movements, Jack was ripped away from the splicer.

He was lifted into the air, and managed to get a good kick in before the young splicer was brought close to the Big Daddy's chest, arms wrapped around his chest like a vise. Jack struggled briefly, realizing that he had no leverage on the larger figure.

A slap stunned him, before more hands – the Rosie's – seized him and held him down. Jack looked up, eyes wide as his eyes re-focused on the sight of Tenenbaum rubbing her hand. She was sad, something that he was familiar with, but it was the first time he had seen her so angry as well. The doctor sighed, gesturing at the man now blubbering in the corner.

"Jack... the man had surrendered. He was no longer fighting..." She smiled, sadly, and signaled for the two Big Daddies to release him. "That is important. You are ruthless, courageous. I do not know if anyone can stand against you for long time. But to _save_ this city, you must be merciful."

Tenenbaum turned around, beckoning the Little Sister forward. The little girl happily leaped into her surrogate mother's arms. Walking gingerly over to Jack, the doctor sighed.

"A man that surrenders is a man who no longer wishes to fight. They are the ones that we must save first. You must show mercy to them, Jack."

Jack turned to face the man, who had stopped sobbing in the corner to watch Tenenbaum as she made her speech. The splicer nodded mutely as he did so, although the man still shrunk back when he noticed the other man's gaze.

"This is the first time, is it not?" The doctor continued. "That someone did not fight, but instead chose to live? You must respect that. Sigma Four, release him."

Nodding, Jack stood up, and retrieved his wrench. Slipping it into a loosened belt loop, he turned to the man, and nodded to him. Slowly, with his hands clearly visible and away from the small arsenal of weapons on his back, he walked over to the half-strangled, half-drowned splicer. Jack stretched out his hand; scarred with the aftermark of a dozen and more plasmids, the limb was at the same time frail yet limber. The two splicers watched as the fingers uncurled, and then were held out, palm up, towards the man in the corner.

Gingerly, he reached out, and grabbed the man's hand. Both men, a minute ago struggling to erase or preserve the same life, shook hands.

**= Vestry Court, Tristain Academy of Magic =**

Taking a step back, Jack walked away from the three stunned girls and the single battered boy, to the middle of the circle of young students. He began counting, and got to about thirty as he saw the response of the staff. Medical personnel had been called up, teachers informed as they rushed across to find the center of the commotion.

Blasts of ice that chilled the air, gusts of winds that whipped through the hall, falling chunks of metal that had once been golems of the Gramont family and beams of fire hot enough to gouge out furrows that one could fit their entire arms into would never remain inconspicuous.

Jack stood at the center of it all, untouched and unmoving as he stood above the broken figure of Guiche da Gramont. Stares, glares and stolen glances took in the sight of the dirty but unharmed splicer that even now walked away from the shocked figures.

The splicer was slightly thoughtful as he tried to process this new concept of dueling in such a frustrating manner. When a fight began, you started fighting and then made every attempt to make sure that the other guy was going to die before you did. Fighting these duels seemed like... well, Jack could understand the concept of having uninvolved persons moving out of his way, and clearing a dueling ground, but for the most part it seemed to be a bunch of useless prattle.

Now it was over.

Due to the fact that he was now fishing the half-eaten pep-bar out of his pocket. Sighing in despair, Jack looked at the crumbed and squashed chunks of the snack bar, crushed by the shield-bash that had hit his side. Well, it sure as hell wouldn't be much taste left, but the boost to his EVE would be needed. He began to pick through the remains of his last meal, and surveyed his surroundings as he did so.

Whispers and hushed conversation drifted through the air. Disbelief, anger, shock, pity... so many emotions were conveyed in that moment, as each tone of voice informed him of their opinions and worries. Jack continued on eating, meeting the eyes of each and every person that cast their gaze his way; he stared them down, unwilling to back down from even curious glances. Hands at his side, at the ready to draw his wrench in a moment's notice, the splicer walked to the edge of the ring, where the students parted like the sea before a ship's hull, to let him pass.

He needed to get away from this.

"Jack!"

Jack turned to see a shock of pink hair approaching. A clutch of muscles tightened in his chest as he saw the streaks of tears in her eyes, the redness of her despair and worry. "Fa-... Jack."

Louise pretty much exploded from frustration and worry as she saw that her familiar was unharmed.

"Stupid, stupid, stupid! Making me worry like that! I thought that you were going to _die_!" She began pounding on his chest, her blows not really hurting, but had enough force behind them to make Jack take a step back or risk toppling over. Louise was in turmoil as she pressed her attack on his chest.

Someone shouted out that she should bow to him, not beat him.

The majority of the nobles around him now retreated back to a safe distance from the suddenly very isolated speaker, away but within sight as they watched the drama unfold.

_He was playing with me! Only nobles could pull of what he did, and he had kept quiet about it! Why, though? What did I do to deserve such deception? Why was he like that? _Her mind was so full of questions, that she couldn't focus on anything to say to the infuriatingly calm man before her. Her growls gave way to sobs, and then silence as she felt him close his arms around her.

This man smelled like the sea...

Wait a moment.

"You... what are you! What was that you did? Magic? But you're supposed to be a commoner! How did you do that? Why didn't you tell me that you could do that?" She was frantic, her thoughts scrambled.

"I did." Jack admonished, making no effort to stop her attempt at stress relief.

Louise looked up, disbelieving, as she gesticulated wildly, trying to think back with her shattered train of thought. "When!" She demanded, voice shrill as thew two completely ignored the people around them.

Drawing a breath, Jack again repeated himself. "Plasmid_s_."

"Again with the _plasmids_!" Louise sighed. "Alright, so your plasmids are... well, what you did back then. But more importantly; what are you? A mage? A noble? How did I su-"

"There are many questions, Miss Valliere." Murmured a new voice. Jack whipped around. Colbert was there, but he wasn't the one that had spoken. It was... well, the man with the massive beard. He approached slowly, with a careful and powerful stride the man stopped a few feet away, his eyes thoughtful as he measured up the splicer. "But I think they are best be answered elsewhere... such as, perhaps, somewhere more private? Please, come with us."

**= Elsewhere = **

Two figures watched on as Jack followed the four figures.

"Oh my... it seems like they're in for it now."

"..."

"What, you weren't impressed?"

"..."

"That heat. Oh, dear Founder, I don't believe I have ever felt a flame that hot before. He was burning, but did you see? The focus on him... oooh, I can't wait to see what that man can do when he's focused on something. He's burning, but it doesn't consume him, see?"

"…"

"And that ice... you must have been paying attention to that fight, didn't you? Would you believe it? The thought is chilling, isn't it? That someone who wielded flames that hot could be so cold as well?"

"..."

"So... you want a wager? How many new gold says that he's a square-class?"

"..."

"Fifty on him being a square class, and you're fifty for?"

"Better."

"..."

The silence was broken by a rustle of paper.

**= Old Osmond's Office =**

The old man's office was impressive, to say the least. He had four massive bookcases decorating his room, arranged around each window that was placed at the bottom of four of the five walls in the pentagonal office. Each case was devoted to each of the four elements, with books and artifacts dedicated to each. More miscellaneous items were scattered about on a collection of cases; busts, relics and stacks of books were spread around the room in equal measure, and Jack found himself wondering just how much of the things around him would have been of any use to him.

Louise coughed politely, attracting Jack's attention. Sighing inwardly, he resigned himself to this interrogation. Logic was telling him the who and why of these three; Colbert was a familiar face, while the grey-bearded man was most likely an elder – a leader, at the very least – while the woman in much more simple garb was as obviously the assistant for the elder of the two men. She held an irritated look on her face, though the source of such irritation wasn't the splicer nor his pink-haired master; her attention was focused mainly on the floor, and Jack pondered if there were any traps to be made aware of.

Colbert inclined his head slowly to Jack's direction, and the splicer returned his greeting. His eyes were intense; the professor was no doubt studying the man in front of him carefully, even now tracing the lines of his scars, the coloration of his wounds. It was like being dissected by sight alone. The man's gaze was no longer academic; it was the feel of one combatant sizing up his opponent. Brutes, Big Daddies and the actual 'warriors' among the rabble that had been the soldiers Rapture Civil War, and Jack knew the feel of their eyes upon him well.

The grey-haired administrator coughed, and stepped forward, drawing all the attention of the room towards him like water being sucked down through a drain. He nodded slightly to Jack, who nodded back. The man smiled, his creases and wrinkles shifting in such a way that reminded Jack of an ADAM slug inching across the grey sea floor.

The man introduced himself. "My name is Osmond, and I am the headmaster of his academy. You have already met Professor Colbert. And this is my secretary, Miss Longueville. As you can guess, there are some... issues... that we must discuss."

Osmond set down an ornate wooden pipe, placing it down on the table with a punctuating clunk. The splicer nodded as Louise fidgeted beside him. She seemed... upset. Very upset.

Slowly, the man looked Jack over, his eyes measuring and calculating. They met, briefly, and Jack saw in the man's eyes an iron will and... something else? Amusement? "Your identity seems to be the larger issue here... so firstly, may we know who you are? "

"Jack." He answered. For him, that was the best answer that he could come up with. Jack was Jack, just as Louise was Louise. The three frowned, not quite sure what to make of it. Finally, someone spoke up.

Colbert stepped forward, his gaze asking for attention. Jack found himself nodding, and Colbert seemed suddenly surprised when he started speaking. "Headmaster..." There was an awkward silence, before Osmond chuckled slightly, and repeated the same gesture as Jack. "Thank you, headmaster... well, may I remind you that the translation spell that I have put upon him is not very complex, so it may have trouble translating more... 'abstract concepts' across the language barrier..."

"I see... keeping that in mind, we shall strive to keep our words brief. Firstly, your origins; where are you from, Mister Jack? Your clothes... well..." Someone with less tact would have said; 'make you look like a raggedy ass hobo that got dragged out of the sea', and while that would have been accurate in the broadest of terms...

"Foreign?" Suggested Colbert.

"Foreign." Agreed Osmond.

"Foreign?" Echoed Jack.

"Not of this place." The secretary explained.

Jack 'ah'd in understanding.

"Moving on now?" Asked Osmond. Jack nodded, and the headmaster continued. "Where are you from, Jack? What kind of place do you originate from?"

That was easy. "Rapture."

"Rapture?" Eyebrows were raised, wondering what Jack was talking about.

"Uh... what exactly is this Rapture, Jack?"

He had looked it up once, in a library. It was in a dictionary: '**Rapture:**_ extreme pleasure, happiness, or excitement_.'

Which was not the case. Jack spoke again. "City."

It was the truth, but not the whole truth; enough to inform them but not enough to surprise them. However, this answer only caused more raised eyebrows. Confusion was rife amongst them as Osmond and Colbert dredged through their memories for such a place.

Finally, another question. "Where is it?"

A little more difficult. "Atlantic."

"Atlantic? Atlantic what?"

Easy. "Ocean."

"Oh my..." Murmured Osmond. "A city upon the ocean?"

A floating city? Like the lighthouse? Not quite...

Jack shook his head to the negatory. "No."

"Above? A floating continent, like Albion perhaps?"

Now it was time for Jack to be puzzled. Albion? Floating continent! The splicer tried to wrap his head around the concept of a floating city. Sure, Rapture was a bizarre place on its own, but it still had a foundation! It was at the bottom of the sea, rather than in the freaking sky! Jack sucked in a slow breath, hoping that his shock wasn't noted, and shook his head.

"Under."

It seemed that the same level of shock rippled through the others. "Under the ocean? You mean there exists a city at the bottom of the sea?"

A nod.

"I... I see." Colbert tapped his chin thoughtfully, and nodded to himself. "I did think that you smelled of the sea... well, its clinging to your clothes... it makes more sense now... well, not absolute sense of course, but..." The professor seemed to now notice the people staring at him. Sheepishly, he backed away slightly. "I'llstoptalkingnow."

"Perhaps a map would be appropriate, Miss Longueville?" Requested the headmaster, his voice a quiet murmur.

The dazed secretary snapped out of her reverie, and nodded briefly. "Which region, headmaster?"

"The world, please." Intoned the old man. "I do believe that... Jack... has been brought here from a very far away place..."

The map was quickly (if a little unsteadily) retrieved by the young woman who attended the older of the two teachers. It was only now that he studied the woman in detail; she had green hair, a dark shade the reminded him of Arcadia's vegetation, tied into a long ponytail. Her robes were identical to Colbert's, except that it seemed tighter fitting and had a skirt as opposed to the pants that the male professor wore. She was a half-head shorter than he was, probably a year or two younger than his physical age, and had a compact build that made him wonder how much exercise there secretaries got. Then again, she probably had to run all over the school, without a pneumo/telephone system. Enough secretaries in Rapture were complaining about the disappearance of those systems that it seemed to matter.

A table was cleared, and the map unrolled. Peering over the lines and boundaries set out by the heavy roll of paper, the splicer tried to make out any features that he could use as landmarks. The general shape of this land seemed to be there, but... it didn't quite line up with his knowledge of the surface world.

His eyes traveled over mountains and seas, taking in the form of the lands around him. It was like looking at a globe, the one that he knew, but... distorted. The shape, the feel of the land was there, and not to mention familiar, but it was also very different. In the back of his mind, the creeping analogy of this place with that of a splicer being compared to the human that they once were was... chilling.

Jack frowned, trying to find something that he could recognize; a reference point from which he could find where he was. "Where?" He repeated, knuckles white despite the scar tissue over them.

"_Where?_" With increasing distress, the normally deadpan man was starting to sound... frustrated.

"**Where!**" Growled Jack, the rumble of his augmented throat causing the others to jump back a little. Even the eldest of the three took back a full step from the man.

The others were silent, unsure of what was happening. Jack straightened slightly, and sighed as he deflated, relaxing completely as he practically slumped down.

"You cannot find your home?" Asked Osmond, while Longueville shifted forward, as if unsure if the man wanted help or not. Jack shook his head, and gestured at the map of the world; the words were unfamiliar to him, but that didn't matter; there wasn't anything here that he could reference with absolute certainty.

Slowly, with a softness that was a complete opposite to his earlier exclamation, Jack whispered an answer: "Not here."

"... there isn't anything you recognize?" Queried Louise, moving to Jack's side. The splicer nodded in response, and spread his hands to indicate the entire map. All of the basic land features were there, but... no, there wasn't anything that he could see.

"So... you come from somewhere else?"

A nod.

The three staff members stared. "Oh my..."

"That would explain many things, I do suppose. However, that we not worry about any cities under the ocean. Rather than this city of Rapture that you speak of, I do think that we shall need more information about what you were doing in that duel, Mister Jack. What kind of magic was that? I certainly have never seen unincanted elemental projection before..."

Magic? Elemental... hmmm. The eyes of the splicer lit up as he began to comprehend what the two men were asking of him. "Plasmids?"

"Plasmids..." Echoed Colbert. "Is that what you call it? Could you demonstrate to us, please? It would be most fascinating..."

Jack nodded. His body – like that of any splicer – would generate EVE. However, this was in such minuscule amounts that it wouldn't actually do any good in combat; most of that would be consumed to keep his tonics and plasmids running at idle, so only a little would actually be usable. Resting increased that EVE regeneration, to the point where a few days' rest would cap him back up to full strength from absolute nil, faster if he got himself a hold of something that helped encourage EVE restoration. Hitting a greater consumption than production ratio would mean that EVE was slowly being drained of you, although there were tonics that restored that balance; Jack was as maxed out as a person could get without endangering their physiology, which was why he could cycle through six plasmids.

The short version: he could safely set his arm on fire.

Agreeing to this, Jack pumped his fist again, letting his left hand burst into flame.

The three faculty again gawked in surprise.

"Plasmid." Jack informed them. "Not magic."

"I see. So... what of that wand? It was the most... well, unique wand that I have ever seen."

"Wand?"

"That thing you were holding in your hand?"

"Wrench?"

"... you call it a _wench_!"

"Wrench." Jack corrected.

"Wrench..." Colbert and Osmond seemed to taste the word in their mouths, rolling the syllables around inside their mouths like a morsel of food. They seemed to satisfy the difference between wrench and wench, and then continued on.

"May I see it?"

Jack nodded, reached behind him and produced the wrench. He placed it on the table, to let them inspect it. Colbert let out a little 'ah' as he inspected the engraving on the side; 'FORGED IN RAPTURE 12in. (LAPLANTE)'.

"Tool." He explained.

"Tool? As in not a wand?" asked Colbert, clearly in surprise. "For?"

"Many." Bolts and brains were just the start of it.

"I see... so it is both a wand and a tool? Something that many plasmideers carry where you are from?"

"Plasmideers?"

"You use plasmids, right? That makes you a plasmideer?"

"Splicer." Jack corrected.

"Splicer, then. Many splicers use wrenches?"

"Some."

"Many?"

A shrug.

"Then what does having this wrench make you?"

"Jack."

Osmond laughed out loud. "... so I see. Simple, but you aren't foolish, are you? How I miss people like you, Jack of Rapture." He chuckled.

A nod. He liked things simple. Kill that, defend this, collect those. Simple was easy. With deliberate slowness, Jack picked up his wrench and stowed it back into his harness.

"Shall we move on? However interesting you are, Mister Jack, we are here to discuss a breach in the rules of the school. I will wish to satisfy my curiosity at a later date, but for now we need to discuss the issue of the duel itself." Continued Osmond, taking the new ideas in stride. "May I know of why the commotion down in the courtyard transpired? Miss Longueville, if you have the report?"

Stepping forward from behind a pile of paperwork, Jack listened to the young woman that now was scanning a parchment that supposedly contained the report.

"According to this, headmaster, this all began in a commotion over in the Alviss Dining hall." She began. "'Guiche da Gramont was involved with a disagreement with two of the other students, a first year and a second year student by the names of Katherine de Trastámara and Montmorency Margarita la Fere de Montmorency, one of the serving staff, a maid by the name of... Siesta, it seems, as well as Mister Jack'... apparently da Gramont was struck by Mister Jack, and proceeded to challenge him to a duel. The rest... is... well, property damage."

"I... I see..." Queried Osmond, speaking slowly as he took on a more thoughtful stance. "So this was a duel, then? I suppose that you would have been unfamiliar with the Academy rules; we do not allow duels between nobles... especially students."

Jack blinked, and then shrugged. "Not a noble."

Longueville dropped the report. Osmond's staff sparked against the floor as its tip shifted from the sudden increase in weight. Colbert's eyes practically bugged out of their sockets as Louise choked and sputtered.

"What!"

"Throwing around magic like that..."

"... I beg your pardon? You're... not a noble?" Choked Louise. "You wield the elements in such a manner and you say that you aren't a noble!"

Jack goggled at the reactions of the people around him. They were so shocked, outraged. So utterly horrified by the thought of this new information that they were – to a person – pale faced and had half-opened jaws.

"... what?" He stammered.

"You wielded magic, did you not? Mister Jack, who are you exactly?" Asked Osmond. "So you say you are not of the nobility... does this mean you're perhaps... royalty?"

Louise tripped up as she whirled around to face Jack, pretty much falling backwards as she squeaked at the thought of having done what she had to Jack. ut before she hit the floor Jack had caught her. He sighed, and straightened her back up, holding her in place until he was sure that she could stand on her own. Her mind was again in an inner turmoil. She fought to bury the many punishments that she would have inflicted upon the 'commoner' familiar, afraid of the thought that he might be able to read her mind. She was briefly thanking the Founder for Jack stopping her when she had first tried to strike him. What would have happened, had Jack not stopped her then? _Things would have escalated,_ that darker part of her mind said, _you would have hit him, you would have starved him, you would have used that whip that you keep under your bed..._

How was she able to face Henrietta knowing that she had struck a royal?

Louise fell over again, and found herself disturbingly comfortable in his embrace. She buried herself into his arms in her shameless act to hide from the others.

Jack sighed, his gaze was cast at the three faculty, who returned apologetic gestures.

"Louise?" He asked, turning slightly away from the teaching staff members, to provide her with a modicum of privacy. "Louise?"

"S-sorry... uhm... are you really a king?"

Royalty... huh. His father, the genetic one, and his father, the one that paid for his creation... they were both 'Kings of Rapture' in their own ways. By all definitions, with all the splicers – especially the English ones - joking that Jack was some new 'King of Rapture' and all that now that he had gone off and killed both existing Kings... well...

"No."

Louise felt a little more relieved at that.

"I see..." Osmond sighed. "So... could you explain who you are, then?"

"Jack." He shrugged. It was that simple. However, the need to repeat himself was there, so he did so. "Just Jack."

The unspoken words rang clearly in his posture. Nothing more, nothing less than the man before you is the Jack that I speak of.

"So you are not a noble? Are you sure of this?" Colbert asked, disbelief in his voice.

Longueville stepped forward. Jack nodded to let her speak. "Perhaps 'noble' has a different meaning in his language?" She asked, before again – like Colbert – realizing that she had asked Jack to speak, not the Headmaster.

"Uh..."

Osmond was again on the verge of laughter, his smile a wide grin as he chuckled. "I see... perhaps this will clear things up: nobles are the ruling class of a society. Nobles in this land are marked by their ability to cast magics. This ability has been bestowed upon us by the divine grace of the Founder Brimir." Explained Osmond. "I hope that is a satisfactory summary?"

Three nods.

Jack sighed. Rule? He didn't rule... not exactly, anyway. Lead, yes. People seemed quick to follow him, but he was no ruler. His 'fathers' were rulers; Fontaine and Ryan, Kings of Rapture, had ruled the underwater 'utopia' into a hellhole, and that was the last thing that Jack wanted to do. The splicer shook his head, and then looked up with a definite no in his eyes.

"No."

Silence.

"You... you are not a nobleman?" Longueville was the first to speak as the three natives stared at Jack. "So you never held a ranking title? Were you perhaps a knight? A Chevalier?"

Titles? Names? Only one that he had ever known of and accepted: "Jack."

"I... I see." The woman flushed red, as if intimidated at the bluntness of the response.

Colbert piped up this time; "A military man, perhaps?"

"No." Only man. Just a man, by the name of Jack, that had pulled off royalty-level magics.

"... perhaps... we should discuss this at a later date? Mister Jack, if you could avoid harming any of our students and any of our buildings, we would be most grateful. For the moment, though, we shall have to... confer over the findings that we have just seen. Founder bless, Jack. And you too, Miss Valliere. Please, take care of Mister Jack and ensure that he does not get into any more fights within the school... or harm any of the students."

Louise nodded her head dumbly. Any other person, anywhere else, she would have been furious. The teachers had basically forgiven Jack for nearly killing a student, and causing damage to the school. She herself had broken a few windows, and maybe a few of her spells might have killed people had they not been so lucky, but at least she had been punished for them! At least she had not done so intentionally! But now... she was also being asked to take care of him. She wasn't some maid! He was her familiar! Well, supposed to have been... a familiar looked after their master, sure, but even now it was hard to think of Jack as her familiar. He was so much bigger now. Larger than life; he was both a hero and a terror in her eyes, and now that he had explained who he was and where he had come from... she couldn't think of him as just a familiar.

"Louise?" Murmured Jack. His hand – charred, rough with calluses and scars – took her own softer hand, and gently pulled her around to face him.

"Alright?"

"I'm... I'm okay..." She murmured.

"Leave?" He asked the three.

"... of course, Mister Jack." Osmond nodded. "We shall see you soon, however. Feel free to explore the school, but please, no more incidents such as this!"

Jack's stomach rumbled as he thought about the dining hall and all the food inside.

"Breakfast." He sighed.

Osmond's laughter rang out through the halls.

* * *

**_As always, I hope you guys enjoyed this! If you have, then please, drop in a review or critique!_**


	8. Zero's Annoying Acquaintance

**_Update! Enjoy, guys._**

**_EDIT: Okay, guys, sorry that there was a formatting error but apparently doesn't like me putting a single = sign as a scene break for the Tristain to Rapture transitions. Fixed now.  
_**

* * *

"Seat's in front of the desk."

The man – middle aged, slick brown hair, widows peak, neat white shirt and striped red tie – sat down on the seat. It creaked, uncomfortably, as the other man unhitched the harness of weapons and ammunition before hanging it up on a Spider Splicer's hook, which had been embedded into the wall behind the desk.

Silence stretched out, and then was snapped by the slick drawl of the businessman as he swung around, letting his eye fall over the room. Settling on the pale, lean figure of the man who had... ehm, 'invited' him here, the man grinned.

"Why thank you. Always nice to see a little more hospitality out here, with all the ruckus going on recently... say, is there anything to drink around here?"

A chuckle, dark and bitter. There was a gesture, pointing to a corner of the room. "There's a puddle of water in that corner over there. But the nearest johnny that works right now is about a ten minute walk, so before I let you get the shits, keel over and crap your pants like the other guy, lets talk business first: if you thought that the Civil War was a ruckus, then we got some real trouble for you now, Sinclair."

"Oh my oh my, you have a ruckus for me, do you?" Grinned the visitor. "Mister Luccio, just what are you intending to d-"

"To speak your language, we have a new business venture for you to... expand into." Salvatore sighed. "Our objective is to recover some... lost... assets, and we need your expertise, not to mention your facilities and the boffins you got stowed away down there in the Sinclair Solution labs."

"I'm not quite sure I un-"

"Four words, then: Bring. Back. Jack. Ryan." The splicer growled. "I'd play nice, and say please, but then again I have a reputation to uphold."

"You're Jack Ryan's bloodied right hand all right. And why would you want to bring back the only man who can claim to be your boss, Mister Luccio?" Salvatore's visitor spread his arms. "Why not just rule Rapture as the inheritor of a god?"

There was a gentle snap of tension as the splicer stood up, towering over Sinclair. "Because he's the only thing holding this goddamn hellhole together, Sinclair! And you. Know. It."

"Oh, do I?" Teased the businessman.

"You know it so well that the only reason I'm talking to you right now is so that your science boys can compare notes with what we have, so yes, you do."

A laugh. "So you've been spyin' on us, haven't ya? I thought Mister Jack Ryan and his 'Rapture Rejuvenation' was all table top dealings, out in the open and all..."

"That's Jack you're talking about, Sinclair. However, you have to deal with me, since he went off and disappeared to God knows where, and right now, we are literally on a hope and a prayer that he's still alive." Salvatore snarled, who stood and slammed his hands down on the table. Slowly, deliberately, he bowed down his head in front of Sinclair. "They're making him an honest-to-God messiah down here in the slums, and once someone breaks that pedestal, all hell is going to break loose, and we are going to be in the center of it all when the shit hits the fan... and they're gonna blame everyone."

A solemn nod. "Now, that... I believe I can understand..."

"So we have a deal?"

"I try and find Jack Ryan. No guarantees, but we'll sure as hell try." Nodded Sinclair. His drawl was gone, replaced by the measured tones of a businessman talking of the fate of his company. "So, the next matter at hand, ol' Sally. What's in it for me and my little boys and girls?"

"Fontaine's assets." Tenenbaum answered quickly enough. Stepping into the room from the side-door, she walked over to Salvatore and handed him a few folders.

Sal nodded, his hard stare transfixing Sinclair. "We have it, and sure as hell a man like you wants to see what kind of toys Fontaine has down there. You'll get relevant facilities now, and the rest as soon as I finish shaking hands with Jack when we have his welcome home party. However, after that you also start working with us to keep Rapture alive."

A grin. "Ain't I already?"

**= Outside the Headmaster's Office =**

"YOU!" Growled Louise. Jack wasn't sure whether he should be happy about her coming out of that small depression that she had gotten into, if fury had been the alternative.

"Me?" Answered the accused. She was tall, probably an inch shorter than he was. Her tresses of firey red hair fell down to about halfway down her back, and... well, looked like she had a pair of watermelons shoved down her top. The young woman had a large chest, and she wasn't afraid to show it off with the way she was wearing that shirt.

"You were spying on us, weren't you, Kirche!"

"Spying? Me?" Queried the 'Kirche', sounding sweet and innocent even though she was probably neither. "Whatever would make you think that?"

"I know what you're like, Zerbst." Growled Louise. "You are always slinking around in the night, aren't you?"

"You know my boys keep me busy, Louise." Cooed the busty redhead.

"That, and I almost brained you with the door when I opened it, so I can safely say that you were listening in on that door." Louise deadpanned.

"Oh, really?" Asked the 'Zerbst'. "Zero, why don't you just stop causing all these commotions, huh? First you have your familiar tear up the Vestry Court, now you start accusing other people of whatever you wish simply because they happen to almost get hit by a door you just opened."

"You were spying! You'd deserve what you get, Germanian s-"

Brushing off Louise, 'Zerbst' continued on. "And what will you do next, Louise the Zero? Something even more stupid? Blow up a priceless artifact or something?"

Louise cut her off with a sweeping gesture, marching up to face the larger, more well endowed woman. "Oh, you're just full of it, aren't you, Kirche? Always prancing around, jiggling like some demented pudding!" Screeched Louise, her cheeks blazing a bright red now. "And just because you know how to set things on fire, you start thinking of yourself as some royal mage? Anyone can set things on fire with a tinderbox and time!"

"My dear, I know that I can set things on fire, and with neither tinderbox nor time. You, however can only do... oh, wait, nothing. From what I saw in the Vestry Court, it seems that your familiar he- wait, what are you doing?"

"… Jack?"

Louise's familiar looked up from where he was, his arm on fire as he let the red lizard - which had its tail on fire - inspect the human's rather curious incendiary limb. It was rubbing its head against the flames, seeming to enjoy the warmth, and occasionally it would lick at the burns on Jack's hand, which would fade for a little while before returning again, prompting it to continue licking.

"It... it seems that you've made a new friend, Flame." Chuckled Kirche. "I guess your familiar isn't all that bad, Louise, if Flame likes him."

Looking at the red- and pink-haired girls, the splicer ignored them, letting his eyes travel to the girl that was now starting at him over the top of a book. She too was crouched down a few feet away, something that alarmed him in that he had not noticed that particular maneuver, and was looking at him with a blank expression that he most often saw in the more heavily conditioned of Little Sisters. This girl was short, even more slim built than Louise was, and had a mop of short blue hair that was cropped close to her head, unlike the other two girls, who had hair that flowed freely down their backs.

Mutely, Jack nodded a greeting to the girl.

"Jack."

The girl nodded back, letting the book down so that both could look at each other, and spoke in a whisper-quiet voice. "Tabitha."

"Oh my..." Grinned Kirche, who started to chuckle. "Quite the man indeed, if you got even Tabitha interested in you!" She cheered. "Oh, which reminds me. My name is Kirche Augusta Frederica von Anhalt Zerbst. At. Your. Service."

"What! _Fa_- no, Jack! _Wait!_ KIRCHE!" Cried out Louise. "What are you going on about, Zerbst?"

"I'm simply saying that not everyone gets to introduce themselves to Tabitha and get a name back." Shrugged Kirche. "That, and you surprise me even further, Louise the Zero. It seems that your ability to spot a man is also zero, like so many of your other abilities."

There was laughter as Louise bristled with rage. "He's my familiar, nothing more, Zerbst!"

"Really? What a pity." Sighed the tanned youth. "Do you mind if I borrow him, then?"

"What! What do you mean by that?" Louise's eyes narrowed as she grit out her words. "Just what do you want to do with him, Zerbst?"

The aloof redhead laughed. "Knowledge of adult nocturnal activities, also zero."

"**Zerbst!**"

There was another bout of chuckling from the redhead. "Oh, don't worry about it, Louise, you'll learn about such matters soon enough... or, well, all considered..." She eyed the girl, making a show of it as she traced the girl up and down. "you may want to grow up a bit, or else it would be quite a painful experience."

"And just what do you mean by that, Kirche!"

Jack palmed his face quietly as the laughter echoed through the hallway. There was a sympathetic nod from the bluette, who returned to her book as the two louder halves of their respective pairs continued to argue.

Five minutes later, the two were still trading insults and innuendo. Louise was sounding scandalized. Kirche was having the time of her life. Jack and Tabitha sat in silence, appraising each other as the splicer entertained the crooning salamander with his blazing arm.

There was a soft thrum, a beat of... something. A call. Jack looked up to the window that had been the source of the noise, to spot a giant head of...

"Gyaaah!"

He jumped back, suddenly forgetting about everything except for the giant head that was sticking in through the window now, and only just a few inches in front of him.

It was slim, streamlined, with a pair of large emerald eyes and a maw filled with giant triangular teeth that looked to be very good at tearing flesh and crushing bones. Jack had - in what was for once an accurate rumor - fought a shark before, and triumphed thanks to the Big Daddy rivet gun and the high explosive bolts that it carried.

However, this was also one of the more traumatizing experiences that he had, since said Rivet Gun's former owner had been killed in the same fight, cut in half by a snap of jaws and a shake of its body within seconds of it starting. In Jack's mind, nothing should have been able to kill a Big Daddy that quickly with just its teeth.

This creature reminded him of one, and it was only now that Jack remembered that they were five floors up.

Therefore, that thing could really get places.

Probably something to do with the giant wings on its back.

Waving his arm in front of him, Jack tried to fend it off with the flame plasmid, only to have the thing let out a breath that temporarily snuffed out the fire on his arm.

Jack scrambled back, his hands and feet carrying him backwards into a wall as he tried to jerk his wrench free of its harness.

Suddenly, there was more movement. Tabitha stepped forward, barring the way of the creature's progress, stopping it short simply by standing in front of it.

"No eating." Whispered the bluette, as if in rebuke. The gigantic shark-like head stopped suddenly, just short of poking the girl's face with its nose, and then retreated with a soft mewling of disappointment.

"What." Breathed Jack, who was close to hyperventilating now as he blinked away the tears of panic in his eyes. He pointed at the creature, and then looked in askance of the other three.

"... you've never seen a dragon before?" Queried Louise.

"No." Answered her familiar, who was nearly breathless as he let out a sigh and fell backwards.

Kirche was too busy laughing her ass off. Muttering something about how cute he was, despite the unmanliness of his reaction, the buxom young woman "So you really are from another world, eh?"

"AHA! I knew it!" Declared Louise. "You were spying on us!"

"Oh pooh, darling, that should have been obvious for anyone with more than half a brain." Chuckled the redhead. "Still, it was fun seeing how ridiculous I could get while you still frothed at the mouth, dearie."

"You little-!"

"Little? You're little, dearie." Giggled Kirche. She walked over to Louise, and patted her on the head. "See?"

As the two continued on, Jack turned to Tabitha, and then pointed first at her and then the dragon.

"Yours?'

A nod confirmed things between him and the bluette. Turning to face it, the splicer dipped his head slightly as he introduced himself to the dragon. Hopefully his name didn't equate to anything like 'attack' or 'food'.

"Jack."

"_Kyuuui_." It answered.

The dragon turned its giant head, its muzzle nodding towards the red salamander. Flame growled, as the two lizards exchanged greetings.

Jack waved weakly to it, and got a lick that covered his chest in the creature's saliva.

There was a slight bop as a staff tapped the sharklike dragon on the head. "... no eating."

Kirche laughed out loud, while Louise – taking the gesture from Jack – palmed her face.

_= Sinclair Solutions, Rapture =_

"This is Vince, Doris, Asad and Wu Xing. They're the best of my RnD boys and girls. Alright, Sally, what'cha think?"

"I think you should stop calling me that. What do you need?"

"I'll be needing the tapes of Mr. Ryan's disappearance. Copies will be fine, I'm not here to destroy evidence, y'see? More like, we need to find out what happened before we can amend your... loss." Sighed Sinclair. "I'd also like some better security for our facilities. You've confiscated all the Big Daddies, so if you could lend us some for some muscle work that'd... smooth the way, so to speak."

"Done, but the Daddie's won't be armed. Four Bouncers."

"Five. I want one patrollin' the halls, doing some roaming. I promise, we won't put sticky notes on him this time to make him a glorified notice board."

"Heh. Deal. I'll be sending Vincent along, too. He'll... keep an eye on you for me. But, if he disappears, so does the deal. Savvy?"

"Savvy. Let's get to the recording room, and we'll see what we can do from there."

**= Alviss Dining Hall =**

It was about two thirds of the way between sunrise and noon.

Most of the students were now away, either in classes, off to meet their familiars in the courtyards outside, or to simply relax in their spare time. Therefore, the local population had mostly emptied the dining hall that was now being used by a relative handful of students. The massive tables were built to seat the entire school, so there was usually a lot of distance between individual clutches of students.

Well, not so much today. Nearer the kitchens was a no-go-zone for the students, who now crowded into the opposite end of the hall. They were all avoiding the same thing; a table. Seated or standing around the table were five humans, three of them second-year students judging by their robes. One was part of the serving staff, with a tray of bread that was currently being set out.

The last of the humans was older, and the only male human of the group. Unlike the other humans, his clothes were coarse, ragged and worn. Burns, tiny holes and slashes had been roughly cleaned, patched up or stitched back together, but like the scars of his skin they still showed a record of a dangerous life. His hands were the most terribly wounded, and it was a wonder that his fingers were still mobile with the many burns and puncture wounds all along his wrist and hands.

Everyone gave him a wide berth, except for the girls around him.

First was Louise, the pink haired 'Zero' that even now

Siesta, the maid, was cautious. And curious.

This man wasn't a commoner, like she had assumed. Neither, did it seem, that he was a noble, one who wielded magic to rule the land...

Even more curious now, she laid out a selection of breads. The one closest to her was picked up, and with almost reverent care broken. His lips opened, and the chunk of bread that he had taken crunched as his teeth cracked the tough shell and bit into the soft warm bread underneath.

A mute drama unfolded.

Jack had, for most of his life, had thought of food the same way a car (if it had been sentient) would think of fuel. Such things were something that was consumed to move and work. It wasn't meant to be enjoyed, nor savored. Food was ingested, rather than eaten. It was something done in a rush, eaten as quickly as possible without much regard to what it was, only that it would be filling.

Well, his opinions certainly changed now that he had a warm loaf of bread in his mouth. Textures, tastes and the warm aroma of the freshly baked Romalian-style cheese-and-olive bread, with the flavor of slices of gently sizzled bacon all throughout, Jack closed his eyes and made a sound in his throat that would have been the Big Daddy equivalent of a purr. It was a more light-hearted rumble than his laugh, and Jack licked his lips self-consciously as he picked up the remains of the crumbs. He returned to his meal, eating slowly, methodically enjoying every bite.

"D-did you like it, mister Jack?"

Finishing the loaf, Jack nodded briefly to Siesta.

"Thank you." A whispered thanks, a nod, and a slight smile as the man continued to bite at the loaf.

Siesta found that her heart had skipped a beat at seeing the roguish man so satisfied simply by taking a bite from some bread. Her cheeks flushed crimson as she brought the tray up to her nose, covering most of her face as she squee'd quietly to herself.

The way to a man's heart is through his stomach...

Was he really that easy to feed?

Beside the black-haired maid, the pink-haired Louise blinked a few times, wondering why her cheeks reddened at the sight of his smile. His eyes had narrowed, though not in suspicious caution. Lips were set wide, though not in a devilish grin that promised pain. All this was not connecting with her image of the somber rogue that Jack had so far been. His emotions were now motivated by a simple pleasure as he rolled the lump of bread around his throat, savoring the flavor.

Across the table from her, Kirche giggled as she observed. This man knew many simple pleasures, it seemed. Her inner fire, the reason of her runic name – 'the Ardent' – flared as she watched his smile. What would he be like, she wondered, had she introduced him to delights more complex than this? Sauntering over, the red haired girl grinned as she watched him pick apart a Germanian loaf. It was, unlike the first airy and crisp Romalian loaf, this one was dense and chewy, with a seed filling. He bit into it, and his eyes widened in surprise.

There was a quick round of laughter as the splicer fought down that bite, unable to compact it into a smaller, more manageable chunk like the first loaf. The springy Germanian bread was resisting all efforts, so Jack switched to divide and conquer tactics.

Even Tabitha was attracted, going so far as to put down her book to stare passively at Jack as he continued his struggle with the loaf in his mouth. Ending the battle with the Germanian bread by taking a deep swallow, he forced the dense chunk of bread down his throat. Jack was, however, reduced to a fit of coughing and pounding on his own chest as his eyes watered. Louise grinned, and then began to giggle as the dignity of her familiar was stripped away.

"Alright, now you'll need to wash that down with something." Chuckled the Germanian redhead. She turned to Siesta, and beckoned her over. "Can you bring us some wine or ale?"

"C-certainly!" Siesta bustled off, clearly torn between leaving Jack here with the leggy redhead, and actually doing her job. She decided on the latter, and moved off.

Louise rounded on Kirche, seeing the chance to continue their sniping.

"Oh, what are you planning now, Kirche?"

"I plan to eat, Valliere." She answered primly, taking a loaf of bread – a Gallian 'baugette' – and taking the tip of it into her mouth.

What followed enraged Louise further.

As if sensing something, Tabitha glanced briefly at Jack, then began to move away.

Jack sighed, as he felt a cold lump of ice drop down into his stomach. He carefully inched backwards as Kirche's display continued.

_= Argus, Rapture =_

"There. He's gone about ten to fifteen frames later."

"So... what happened there?"

A tap on the screen.

"I have no clue."

A shrug. "Go over it again."

A button was pushed, a small throttle engaged, then eased off, slowing down the movement of the film to a crawl.

"Slowly, slowly..."

The film stopped rolling, frozen on the single frame.

"See that? That ring? What is it? That's not like any 'porter plasmid I've seen before..."

"No snap back, no nothin'. Just pops up and boom, no more Jack Ryan. Gone, woosh. Jus' like that..."

"... hmm. Not like that black hole plasmid we brought out... bring the Stuff, grab a detail and a couple of our 'porter guys. We're going bottomside."

**= Alviss Dining Hall, Tristain Academy =**

_He swirled the drink around in his glass, his face impassive and pondering as he observed the red liquid moving around inside of its vessel. The master smiled softly to himself, as he beckoned his servant forward. She dutifully bowed, and awaited his instructions._

_"Drink." The master commanded, offering her his glass of wine._

_"Oh, but sir, that would be inappropriate."_

_"Drink." The master repeated, before his smile widened even further. "But do not swallow."_

_"Sir?"_

_"You were tasked to serve me wine, were you not?"_

_Understanding dawned upon her, and she took the glass of crimson drink in her delicate fingers, taking it up to her soft, tender lips, she tipped it back as the master watched, the cool liquid into her mouth. The day was hot, and dry. Temptation racked through the young girl's mind to soothe her parched throat with the liquid that was now swirling in her mouth..._

_Holding it there, the master chuckled slightly as he beckoned her forward. Their faces close, the young woman served her man his wine, careful not to spill anything. Joined, the master enjoyed the taste and feel of the wine and its vessel, a soft laugh escaping his lips._

_Kyaaa..._

Breaking away from her dreams as the empty glass teetered from her inattentiveness, Siesta chirped cheerfully as she rounded the corner balancing the tray of drinks in her arms. "I've brought... the... uh..."

Her cheerfulness died suddenly as she saw the scene in front of her. "... oh."

Jack was sitting underneath a table. Tabitha was reading a book beside him.

Siesta quirked her head to the side. "Uhm..."

"-solutely disgusting! Even for you, that is jus-"

"Like I care! If life is not lived, then how can we say that we are even alive? I do what I want, and do what I can! If I like something, I will do my best to enjoy it! If you're too immature to appreciate good bread, then just go outside!"

"I can enjoy good bread, but the way you were eating it! And offering it to Jack like that! You act more like a seamstress than a noble!"

A bun was hurled in Kirche's direction.

The tirade continued on, and Siesta set down the tray of wine and light beers to crouch down in front of the two more level headed diners.

"Uhm... how long have they been at this?"

"A while." Sighed Jack.

Siesta scratched her cheek ruefully as Kirche caught Louise in a headlock that involved shoving the pinkette's nose in between the much more buxom redhead's cleavage and not letting go. "Oh my..."

Jack let out a long suffering sigh, turned to Tabitha, and nudged her gently. "Happen often?" The man asked.

A nod.

"Ah." He sighed as a crescent shaped roll bounced off the table. He reached out, and caught it, before bringing it up to his lips and taking a few nips off an end.

Seeing Siesta's look, which translated something between confusion and hunger, he broke off a chunk and offered it to her.

The maid colored slightly, and shook her head furiously.

"Ah! No, that... that would be inappropriate! M-might I offer you a drink instead?"

Jack nodded, and picked out a bottle of wine. Taking off the cork, he stopped halfway to bringing the bottle to his lips when he noticed Siesta's shocked expression.

"Hmm?"

"Uhm... Mister Jack? You aren't supposed to drink it that way..."

The splicer frowned. _There was another way?

* * *

**Aaand there's the chapter. The drill is pretty much the same here; review if you liked it. Review if you don't like it and tell me what I did wrong.**_


	9. Zero's Ended Beginning

_**Well, this has been sitting in my HD for a while, so now its about time I let it out. Jack's rendition of the Foquet arc, comin' up! Introductions and suchlike are over, so now we'll be getting into the meat of things, more or less. From here on in I warn you that any ZnT purists will see a minor overhaul of the system of magic in ZnT, as well as some upgrades for the mages to keep up with Jack's... well, awesome. **_

_**Don't forget to review! Enjoy~!

* * *

  
**_

**= Old Osmond's Office =**

"So, Colbert. What do you make of Louise's new..." There was a hesitant scratching for a word. "... familiar?"

"He's no doubt a familiar, I saw the runes etched onto his hand. That's proof enough of the Contract being formed." Colbert mused. "Really, that's all we would need had Jack been something more mundane like a cat, or a bear. Or even a dragon, for that matter."

He scratched his jaw, and reached out for a book containing records of past familiars, finding a bookmark and opening it to reveal a set of runes, along with a record of their achievements, not to mention the notes of the mage themselves and the name that they had carved into this small part of history.

Flipping through a few pages, he flicked back and forth a few times. Colbert 'tsk'ed in frustration, and started turning through to the index, a scrap of paper appearing in his hands. "But is that even possible? For a mage to summon another human... no, another mage as a familiar?"

"Why not?" Shrugged the older man. "The entire spectrum of the bestial has been covered in the magical summonings. Manticores, dragons, horses, moles, mice... it all depends on the mage, and we are a very diverse lot, are we not?"

The older man chuckled, while the younger fell back into deep thought.

"Well, a familiar is the one most suited to the mage," Posited Colbert as he thumbed through more pages. "so perhaps a mage that will teach a mage to harness what abilities she may have..."

"That is, however, your job, Jean." Chuckled Osmond, who walked over and peered over the other teacher's shoulder as he flicked through past familiars. "A mage to teach a mage, that has how it has always been. But... this man. This man... just what is he? He is certainly no mage that I have seen before."

"He's unique to my experiences as well..." Colbert stopped, and compared the runes on the paper to the runes on the book's pages. "Here we go. Familiar Gandalfr. Said to have been able to wield many weapons in defense of their master... well, this makes things more confusing. Did the runes activate? They're listed under 'arcanum' class contract runes, but I didn't see them when he used that weapons..."

The man scowled at the thought of having written down the runes wrong.

"I'll triple check the runes, but for now all I can say is that while this man may be Gandalfr... as well as the man that we saw today."

Both shuddered quietly at the thought.

"I... see..."

"Well..."

"What of the mage that he had been contracted to?"

"Louise Francoise, a Valliere." Osmond recalled quickly. Also known as Louise the Zero, incapable of anything magical aside from creating explosions on an absurdly large scale from spells such as 'silence'. There were two omniglots at this school, and one had no clue as to why she was able to speak in any of the languages she had been addressed in. "And an... uhm... an unknown factor in magic."

"Quite true." Murmured the balding teacher.

"So... what shall we do now?"

The professor let out a long and sullen sigh. "I've taken a note of those runes on his 'wrench', and tonight I'll see what I can find in the archives." He began. "There are a few artefacts there that I recall as having the same style of rune-markings, like that 'Staff of Destruction' that you had donated some years back, and I do wonder if this wrench – and, by extension, this Jack of Rapture - will share the same source as they do..."

A nod, and then a hand raised in askance. "And what shall we do with that information, Jean?"

"I..." The professor paused, flushed red, then shrugged. "I... don't know."

Quietly, in the tucked-away corner of the pentagonal room, a green-haired woman facepalmed.

**= Alviss Dining Hall, Tristain Academy =**

Feeling his forehead pressed against his fingers, Jack slowly slid a thumb and four fingers off his face.

Had he been more emotive, he would have said something like; hooo boy...

Louise was at it again, shouting and raving at the buxom redheaded Kirche as she began to suggest... things. They were, Jack realized, metaphors. But he quite honestly didn't know what they were metaphors of. She was listing off a series of objects that fit into one another, but... well, he wasn't quite a mechanic; more a plumber, actually, as well as a general troubleshooter but then again now she was talking about oars and boats and he really didn't want to confuse himself more... aaand now he realized that he was going off on a tangent, so perhaps something to drink would be appropriate at the moment.

So, taking a large mug off the table, he began to do just that.

The four girls looked on as Jack set down the mug of slightly warmed wine with a whispering 'clunk'. His hand was steady as he lifted his arms and then proceeded to stretch out. The man was full, almost uncomfortably so as he leaned back. Jack could swear that he could feel the wine sloshing about in his stomach. The splicer burped, rather loudly, and then let out a contented sigh as the air continued to escape.

"How uncivilized." Sniffed Louise, already drawing back from the brief stench as Siesta turned a bright pink shade and moved away. "You... you're..."

She fell into the usual routine of frustrated expression; growling and snarling wordlessly as she tried to grasp at what she wanted to articulate, but failing to do so and instead acting like she was strangling something that was invisible to everyone else while being strangled herself.

Kirche sighed, before tapping her chin thoughtfully as she leaned across the bench, resting her head against Jack's shoulder.

"You know, I've – unfortunately – been given the curse of understanding what Louise is trying to say." She purred. "Poor little girl's probably saying something like:"

The young woman adopted a pose with both hands clasped, eyes pointed skyward as if in prayer as she swayed back and forth in mock distress as her voice climbed the scales into a falsetto screech. "Oh, mister Jack, why is it that you're so rudely mannered when your absurdly powerful magic means that you're obviously some kind of noble?'"

Louise seemed to halt immediately, then point a finger accusingly at Kirche.

"That's not what I m-"

The redhead interrupted with a cutting gesture. "Of course it was, dearie." Chuckled the older of the two, before she glomped the pinkette and held her between her substantial assets. "I've been around you too long."

Jack sighed as he picked up a piece of bread, and rejoined Tabitha and Siesta underneath the cover of the table as the two girls began their verbal sparring anew.

"Stopping them." He muttered, glancing at the two girls. "Any idea?"

_= Sinclair Solutions, Lower Labs =_

"We have no idea." He spoke flatly. That had not been a question. It was one hell of a statement. Sinclair frowned as he leafed through a report from the boffin boys. A shake of the head, and then the portly man stood up and sighed. "We have no idea where one of the most important men in Rapture went. No body, not even a trace of a clue..."

"We are here to solve problems, hence our name." He began. "Which, should I remind you, is 'Sinclair Solutions'. We are here to provide solutions." The man turned to the scientist to his right. "What kind of progress do we have on this?"

The man consulted some hastily scratched out notes on his lab-coat, twisting the hardy fabric this way and that. Finally, he gave up.

"Nothing. Just nothing. There isn't anything here that I can say except that Jack Ryan simply disappeared into this hole. We sure as hell don't know what started it, or how he happened to come across it. There's nothing here or in the pipes about any new plasmids that could do that, and... I don't know... we can't replicate it, that's for sure."

"That's true, but perhaps there is no solution to this?"

"There are... possibilities..."

Tenenbaum stepped into the lab, silencing all conversation with her stern glare as she surveyed the room. Behind her trailed a pair of Bouncer-class Big Daddies, who growled menacingly as they peered around with their mistress. The almost-elderly woman crossed her arms, then turned to the man who had been in charge up until she had stepped into the room.

"You know who I am, yes?" She asked.

"D-doctor Tenenbaum!" The first man to answer shakily replied. "H-how... pleasant... to see you..." He was polite enough not to stare at the two Big Daddy 'bodyguards' that she had brought along with her.

"If I wanted to be patronized, I would listen to tapes of Andrew Ryan." She snapped back. "But, unfortunately, the entire collection was incinerated."

"Uh..." The former publicity executive blanched, and then shrunk away from the glare of the five-foot-two package of angry woman.

"Sinclair." She finally called out, pointing at the aged businessman. "Progress?"

The man, unlike his employee, didn't even flinch as he smiled coyly. "None towards finding your boy, but we've ruled out any foul play on our side of the fence."

"So he is no longer in Rapture?"

"Well, no. He ain't. To be quite honest, the best explanation that I have right now is... magic."

"And just what is magic doing in Rapture? You can't just make someone disappear at the click of your finger, can you?"

"We're looking into it, Doc, but it ain't as simple as just bringing someone back from the dead. Someone's gone and poof'd him off someplace else." Sinclair shrugged, before...

Before...

Wait a moment.

"Just a sec, doc. I've got an idea;"

All heads turned from nervously watching the Big Daddies and the tiny package of fury between them, swinging around to lock onto Sinclair as he rubbed his hands together. "Jack Ryan is the son of Andrew Ryan, yes? I've also heard that you've been able to use those Vita-Chambers on him lately, and..."

Sinclair grinned.

"This is going to get interesting..."

**= Louise's Room, Tristain Academy =**

"How boring..."

Kicking the door open and all but slamming it as she marched into the room, Louise huffed as she walked into the middle of the room, her fingers already at work on the little brooch at her throat, pulling off the heavy black robe off her shoulders and throwing it onto the dresser. She began to unbutton her shirt, and tossed that across the room to join her other clothes. The pinkette realized that she would have to call up a servant for that now... there was no way she'd have the nerve to ask Jack to do that again.

Especially after what she now knew about the man.

"Stupid Kirche..." Muttered the girl. "I hope you're happy with what you've done..."

The remainder of her uniform joined the bed, and the youngest daughter of the Valliere began picking through her dresser to find some clothes to wear to bed.

It had been an exhausting day, with everything that had been going on. Louise was still unsure of what to do with Jack; he seemed perfectly comfortable with settling down in that corner of her room, wrench in his hands and head resting on his knees.

Underneath the layered tresses of the pinkette's head, there was (as always) turmoil. Just who... wait, what was this man? He didn't act like any noble that she had ever seen before, but had thrown around (to quote Kirche) 'absurdly powerful' magics with impunity. Magic power was a fair indicator of someone's noble status, but not an absolute ranking...

A bastard child of a ruler, perhaps? In some faraway country? He did say that he was was from this... 'Rapture'. A place underwater...

What had it been like 'down' there?

_= Rapture, Bathysphere Pens =_

Something smelled like... fuel?

"Oh... oh God."

The couch tumbled down the stairs, bursting into flames as it crashed onto the first landing, and then sailed along the cramped stairwell and onto the floor.

Having stumbled back and tripping up on the fallen, formerly decorative pillar as he had scrambled away from flaming cushion-y death, Jack peered past the roaring flames as he moved on his hands and feet, back scratching against the ground as he tried to move away.

Incoherent screaming – belonging to both men - filled the tunnel as the flames flickered, and a thuggish looking man-shaped thing burst over the flames, lead pipe in hand.

"SPLOICER! Goddamnit, lad, get back!"

The splicer swung wildly as Jack jumped back, letting the lead pipe pass through empty air as the human man drew back an arm, which held a slightly worn but otherwise clean wrench in his hand.

Jack winced as he saw the thuggish splicer's cheekbone cave in from the blow of the wrench, skin and the flesh underneath tearing as the newly arrived man followed through with his strike. There was a whimper, and then the thuggish splicer swung again at Jack, catching him in the shoulder with a horizontal swing.

"Aurgh!"

Pain flared in his shoulder as the pipe smacked into his arm, and Jack felt his left hand's grip on the precious radio loosen, the device falling to the ground as he tried to move away from more wild swings.

"Hurts... damnit..."

He ducked to the side as the splicer went for a stab with the blunt instrument, and grit his teeth as his wrench flicked out again, smashing into the man's lower ribcage. Bone splintered and crackled as hardened steel smashed into them, and the man doubled over as Jack withdrew, retching up a mix of blood, bile and vomit as he fell to his hands and knees.

"You need to kill him, boyo! Its your only chance! You've gotta do it, lad, I know you have it in you!"

His wrench gripped firmly in both hands, Jack brought his wrench up, then brought it down to claim his first kill.

Jack stumbled through the stairs, his shoulder still smarting as Atlas advised him about he was to do now that he was done with the splicer; namely, to loot the body for bucks, bandages and anything bloody valuable then get the hell out of there. His arm was still throbbing, and his knuckles rubbed raw by the sheer forces that went into punching the living daylights out of the splicer.

_"My Daddy is smarter than Einstein, stronger than Hercules! And lights a fire with a snap of his finger! Are you as good as my Daddy, mister?"_

The broken recording scratched through the next section of the advertisement, and Jack stared at it as the message repeated. How dull... he inspected the thing, wondering if there were any items that he could take and use for his own benefits.

_"That's a lotta luck you have there, boyo."_ Murmured Atlas over the radio. _"That there's the jingle of a Gatherers Garden. Now would you kindly see what's up there? You never know... we might luck out here..."_

Drawn to the stairs, he obediently ascended onto a balcony, and the alcove hidden inside of it, to find himself facing a vending machine.

_"Gatherer's Garden, one of the most beautiful sights in Rapture, if I can say so meself. If you want to survive down here, you've gotta learn to love 'em. See if there's any plasmids left in there, and we'll see if you can get spliced up."_

Jack approached the machine, a rose-red fridge-like vender. It was broken, insofar as he could tell, but in the dispenser portion of the machine, the man spotted an empty syringe. Picking it up, he inspected the hollow glass-and-metal device. It was much thicker than most, about a foot long, a rounded boxy shape that reminded him of a smoothed-down brick with a needle protruding out of one end and a plunger fixed to the other end. Its function was obvious.

_"Look around, can you see any red vials? There should be a plasmid there..."_

"I see it." Confirmed Jack, easing his hand into the dispenser and wrenching free a large bottle of the stuff. He inspected the red liquid for a moment, not quite understanding what it was.

_"You just push that needle you found through the top of that thing. Simple thing to do, lad, and you're gonna find yourself that much better off with those plasmids that you got."_

"Plasmids? What are plasmids, Atlas?"

_"Would you kindly just forget about that and just stick that thing into your arm already?"_

Jack nodded, and in a series of quick and efficient movements, he uncapped the needle, exposing the hypodermic tube to the stagnant air of Rapture, then plunged the needle into the top of the bottle and pulled back the syringe, filling the hypo with the bloodly liquid. Jack grit his teeth, then pushed the neelde into his arm, and pushed the plunger down. The plasmid filled his bloodstream, spreading through his arms as ADAM started colliding with his genetic material.

Pain.

Suddenly, there was pain and screaming. It took Jack a while to realize that it was his own screaming that was echoing through the halls. The empty bottle of Electro Bolt clattered across the ground as lightning surged through his arms, bands of energy dancing between his fingers as the muscles in his arms spasmed and snapped. Jack bounced off a wall, and collapsed as he found his body fighting against itself to try and hold steady and at the same time explode into action.

"Calm down, boyo, its all right, its just your genetic code being re-written! Just hang in there!"

Jack had finally found a grip on the ornate archway when he fell again, rolled once as his arm swung out in a wild haymaker-like movement, then he found himself face-to-railing with the balcony. Clambering for support, he forced his arm up, as his veins glowed white with the energy moving around inside.

His hand slipped, armpit smashing against the railing as his leg straightened.

The splicer saw the ground.

It was rushing up to meet him.

**= Northern Wall, Tristain Academy =**

His entire body seemed to sneeze, that jerking motion that jarred his mind back into reality. Jack let out strained gasp as he reached out and grabbed onto the carnellations of the castle wall. He shivered, more from the memory more than the cold winds that were starting to pick up, and blinked away the pained tears of sleep and memory.

And, as the clock tower let out a muffled chime, that was how Jack Ryan of Rapture ended the second day of his existence in this new world.

He breathed out a sigh, his eyes struggling to pick out the huge expanse of rolling hills and forests that were spread out before him, half hidden by shadow and lit up by the full moons' light. They had two moons here, one red and the other green. Jack found himself worried about that.

Five floors up, the view from this hilltop castle was... unique. Gathering his courage, Jack peered over the rampart, and then quickly retreated when he felt his head beginning to spin. Heights were something he never handled well. Falling out of the sky in an airplane, falling off a balcony while his genetic code was being rewritten... and more recently falling down a series of unused vent shafts that had nearly ended with his death. The first two events had been less than half an hour apart, while the third was still fresh in his memories and their ache still felt in his muscles whenever he flexed his limbs too slowly. Rushing adrenaline dulled the pain, but... Jack shook his head, and broke himself out of his contemplative mood.

There were others, too, like the tumble down the vent shafts during his second visit to Hephaestus but those were the ones that stood out for him.

Sitting there in silence, Jack closed his eyes as he supported himself on the carnellations of the castle with his white-knuckle grip, feeling the wind on his face as it whipped over the wall. He let out a sigh, wondering how the Little Sisters would have reacted to such a place. Melissa would be climbing these 'odd wall', jumping from the top of one to the other with no fear for the fall that could easily end her. Alicia would no doubt be chasing after Melissa, trying to keep her blond-haired friend out of trouble and probably failing to do so. Little Stacy would be too scared to do anything, and she would probably be to run and seek out the safety of either a Big Daddy or Jack himself. Luanne would find her way to the darkest of the corners in the towers, and probably hide for a while. Little Marsha would stick close to Tenenbaum, clinging onto the older woman's skirt or leg, while whispering warnings to Lily, the Sister that loved to move through the vents...

Jack grit his teeth as he turned around to survey the lamplit courtyards below. He was there for some time when someone called out to him.

"Thinking of others?" Asked a voice.

It was familiar to the splicer yet also foreign in its tone and... ah.

Miss Longueville stood behind him, still clothed in the teachers' uniform of a tight coat and a close-fitting skirt, but had discarded the bulky black robe. She was smiling faintly as she bathed in the moonlight, her arms folded under her modest bust and clutching at her elbows. She was defensive, keeping a distance from him. It wasn't surprising, seeing that she had first met him as someone who had just dismantled one of the (competent?) fighters among the student body.

"Mister Jack?" The young woman ventured again. 'Mister Jack' remained where he was, elbows resting on the inner railing as he let his gaze again wander over the inner courtyard. Some of the nocturnal activities were being carried out, mostly by the serving staff, but for the moment the two had almost absolute privacy, it seemed.

The splicer turned his head to face her as he arched an eyebrow. "Hm?"

"You seem..." She paused, looking for a word, letting out a small 'ah' before she spoke it; "... contemplative."

Jack's only answer was a single shouldered shrug. Dismissive, but not rudely so. Without words, the man seemed to communicate that she had the better idea of what he was doing up here. The green haired woman cocked her head to one side, trying to puzzle out the man as she took an instinctive step back and crossed her arms over her chest as the wind began to pick up. The pigeons were going to have trouble tonight...

"So... you're here alone, then?"

A nod, before Jack inclined his head towards her, a gesture which made her briefly flush red before the meaning came across to her. It wasn't him being interested, it was him being curious.

"Oh... I was about to send some letters." She explained, holding up a pair of white scrolls, wrapped in a protective second layer and standard warding spells. Curious now, Jack nodded briefly before walking over to examine the two rolls of paper. Just like the mail he found in the pneumo office, they were rolls with a stamped seal on them.

"For?" Jack asked, unable to help – with a combination of boredom and genuine interest – but feel curious about the messages. Information was power, Tenenbaum had taught him.

"My friends." Longueville admitted, flushing slightly at the question. "Well, more like... perhaps you could say an older sister. She pretty much raised me when..."

There was a huff of fatigue, and the splicer knew no more of the young woman's story.

"That's a personal matter." She giggled. "I'm sure you understand."

A shrug, and then a nod. "I do." Jack admitted, before stepping back and clear of her path.

**= Pigeon Coop =**

Longueville snatched a glance back at the man as he continued to stare out into space, seemingly drinking in the vastness of the fields around him. Sighing, the young woman pulled open the door to the pigeons' coop.

A figure, shrouded in a hood, turned to face her.

"Who'se there!"

Both the humans jumped back as the pigeons – as one being – recoiled back from the sudden noise. Cries of the birds filled the room.

The green-haired secretary peered through the darkness, and then stammered out a name. "P-professor Colbert?"

"Ah... Miss Longueville?"

Both spoke at the same time: "What are you doing here?"

Catching herself, Longueville gestured towards Colbert to speak first.

"I was just sending letters to some colleagues of mine, about the runes that I had unearthed in the Artifact Vault."

"Oh, the Artifact Vault?" The discomfort melting, Longueville nodded in understanding. "Old Osmond's been wanting that place inventoried recently, but I've never been able to get in there..."

"That's understandable." Colbert nodded. "you'd have to be a square-class mage to even think about breaking the locks by using magic."

Longueville nodded. "I see... the wards did seem pretty impressive, professor."

"The credit's not mine." Chuckled the balding man. "It is quite the masterpiece of protective enchantments, although I do think I've spotted some serious flaws in its construction..."

Interest perked up in the young woman's eyes. "Which would be?"

"Physical force," He allowed, and then quickly shushed the opening mouth of the secretary. "but you'd need something huge to even think about scratching that wall. Like crashing a flying ship into it. More likely than not, you'd end up destroying all the artifacts in the Vault anyway."

"Oh..." Deflated, Longueville allowed herself a small smile. "Wouldn't be a ward if any old student could just pull the doors open, right?"

"That's so." Laughed Colbert. "Say, why didn't you try to just get a key off Old Osmond? He has plenty..."

"Any favors asked of the headmaster more likely than not ends with me being groped, Professor Colbert. I'd avoid that if possible..."

Colbert flushed red, and nodded furiously to change the subject. "Ah... erm... well, I have access to it. Perhaps you'd like to come with me when I continue with some research, after lunch tomorrow?"

A bright smile radiated from the young woman. "I'd love to."


	10. Zero's Returned Familiar

_**I'm still writing, albeit slowly. University's piling on the work, so I'm gonna be posting a lot more slowly these days.**_

_**Here's the next chapter of Zero Shock, guys. Enjoy and review, please~!**_

* * *

_Dearest Sister,_

I hope that this letter finds you well.

So much has happened these last two days!

It has been tiring, but I have good news: I finally performed a spell that did not explode!

The Springtime Familiar Summoning Ritual went smoothly, and I summoned a familiar.

I thought things had gone well, but...

Then everyone found out -what- who I had summoned.

It was a man; his name is Jack, and he's now my familiar.

There's runes and everything, just like on Mantieu and Chauncy.

About Jack: He is tall, and maybe the same age as you, and he's very quiet, but he is also so coarse.

It was like I was watching a barbarian in the body of a nobleman, seeing him walk and eat and fight.

Yes, the fight.

My familiar was challenged to a duel by Guiche da Gramont.

You remember that soldier who Eleanor was engaged to a few years back?

The younger brother of that man is Guiche.

He won. Jack won. Founder, it was scary to watch him fight.

Sister Eleanor fought like that too, hasn't she? With spells and hurling elements around.

But Jack is much more than that. He was so violent with his spells.

That man cut through a golem of bronze with fire magic.

He knows magic, sister! My familiar knows more magic than I do!

How am I supposed to live with that?

He can use square-class magic when I can't even manage a dot-class spell!

That man, was he sent here to curse me?

The pinkette stared at the parchment scroll, tapping her chin thoughtfully with the blunted tip of her quill. Slowly and carefully, the shaft of white goose-feather dipped into the inkwell as she scratched out a few more letters, printing in her flowing handwriting the words '_Yours lovingly_,' before signing off with a tired and long drawn-out sigh.

_Louise._

"That familiar..." She grumbled, carefully reaching into a pouch of dry sand. The ink was yet to dry, and the fine powder would help that drying further along. Sprinkling the soft brown sand over the paper, she left it for a while as she undressed and changed for bed. Properly prepared to sleep, she grudgingly returned to the sand-covered paper. Scraping most of the sand off, she dabbed the paper with a cloth to remove the remainder of the powder, then folded it neatly into a parchment envelope. Tying it with a ribbon, Louise slipped on a small ring with her family's coat-of-arms on it, and a wax seal was pressed onto the back of the letter, stamping it with her family's crest, a manticore rampant, with a wand-sword held in its beak.

Finished, Louise yawned as she glanced outside. Well into the night, with the moons high in the sky, waxing until they were nearly whole._ Full moons tomorrow.._. Louise observed as she slipped into her bed. The door was locked, since she assumed that he was now throwing his weight around and finding himself a more comfortable place to stay...

Well, that was what she'd do, anyway.

He had slept in a corner last night. In the shadow of a lowly third-daughter's table, the man who had seen the headmaster of the Tristain Academy of Magic all but bow down to him had slept in a dusty dormitory corner. In his clothes, with his back against the wall and his weapon in his lap, the man who – in her society – would have settled for no less than a four-poster bed.

Like the one that she had slept on...

_Was he really royalty?_

Magic power was the ruling measure in Tristain. A person's magical power was a reliable method of finding out a rough measure of their rank in society. The families in the lower end of the scale often had weak magical strength – a triangle class mage would be considered a prodigy within the family, and destined to influence the house's affairs greatly, were they not entitled to the right of the firstborn. They worked jobs that a skilled commoner could replicate, like how forming swords with Earth magic was just as repeatable with steel, heat and hammer.

Conversely, the much more powerful families – both in magic and monetary influence – were often used to seeing square class mages in their ranks, and performed roles that were more fit for their station as the ruling class of nobles; they were leaders, both military and political, were often at the forefront of any conflicts concerning the country as a whole, and for the most part feared and respected as the epitome of human ability. The royalty were above even that, and it was a rare generation indeed that the king or queen of Tristain was not a square class mage or better.

Jack, however... just what was he?

Was he her familiar? Or was she just kidding herself when she thought that Jack would submit to her will? Even during their first meeting, she could feel his overpowering presence. She had thought it only to be the summoning ritual's afterwash of magic, now Louise was beginning to double-check her emotions.

Questions rolled back and forth like waves in the sea, lapping on the shores of her consciousness as she tried to puzzle out the young man that had become her familiar – or was she now his unwitting servant? Louise grumbled and growled, her pillow alternating between being close hugged and then being pushed away as she searched for answers that would not come to her. Even when she did find answers to some questions, the young girl only found herself with more questions to answer the answers. This was getting ridiculous, fast.

Louise spent an hour wondering, and seemed to find herself only with more questions than she had started with.

=** The Sanctuary, near Fontaine Futuristics **=

"Where is Daddy?"

A question that had been asked almost a thousand times, every time the Little Sisters had seen someone who had somehow or another earned the trust of Rapture's children. A good gauge of how favored you were in Jack Ryan's world was to be around him when the younger girls were present, and then to see how they reacted to you afterwards.

The fact that you were even on speaking terms with one was quiet the indicator in the first place, actually.

Sinclair found himself in front of the Little Sisters Orphanage this day, and now was looking at his own passkey as he slotted the punched metal card into the reader. It clicked, and opened. Ah, good ol' Argus Securities.

Sliding the bulkhead aside, he was assaulted with bright colors and open doors – something that was almost non-existent during Fontaine's dominion over the facility – and soon Sinclair was rubbing his eyes as his gaze drifted over brightly rendered pipes, people and crude caricatures of Big Daddies and other prominent figures from the life of the average Little Sister,

He was surprised to also see Tenenbaum, Salvatore, and a gaggle of splicers that he did not recognize by name (but had seen around often enough to identify) scrawled onto the walls.

"Hey, hey mister! Lily asked you... where is Daddy?"

Oh boy. The Big Daddies were starting to notice, now, and were plodding over to him. Round eye holes bored into him with their yellow gaze.

"Daddy is away, girls." Sinclair tried to reassure them. He wondered if this was how every nanny felt when they were asked the same question. Or a single mother, for that matter. "I suspect that he is very busy at the moment."

=** Tristain Academy Walls **=

He wondered if there was anything to do here.

Jack walked the hallways once more, noting the lack of people wandering around this night. No Guiche, no... well, anyone. Servants were glimpsed, darting here and there, but they were more hurried now, rushed when he had last seen them. He paid that some mind, wondering if the night before was more relaxed than tonight.

A random thought crossed his mind as a familiar looking black-haired maid bustled through a door, triggering a cascade of questions and answers. The night was young, but it was already empty of anything more than the Splicer and the mice in the corners of the room. Events recently had caused the school to go into full panic, namely because of a certain element shooting berserker firing off shafts of fire that cut through stone like the cliched hot knife through butter.

Jack sighed at his conclusion; this was probably his fault that everyone was suddenly afraid to go out into the night.

Then again, perhaps that was a good thing. Fear would mean that he – for the most part – would be left alone by the people who would do him harm. Such a strategy had (unintentionally) served him well during those first few weeks after the death of Atlas/Fontaine and Andrew Ryan.

Jack adjusted his sleeves a little, idly, as he made his way back to Louise's room.

=** Louise's Room **=

Sunlight streamed in, marking the beginning of the third day of Louise Valliere's cohabitation with Jack.

Moments later, she was screaming.

Jack easily ducked underneath the thrown pillow, arching an eyebrow curiously in Louise's direction as he stepped aside the second pillow. He was aware of this 'pillow fighting' that the Little Sisters were fond of engaging in, despite his concerns about them fighting amongst each other. It was supposed to be a 'fun' thing to do, something that was purely recreational rather than life-or-death. So why was Louise so... well, upset?

He guessed that this wasn't pillow fighting, then.

"Y-you? Why are you still here!" Louise accused, shooting up and out of her bed as Jack stood up and rubbed the sleep out of his eyes.

"Huh?"

"Don't play dumb with me!" She screeched. "You... you..."

"Louise?" Concern, now, lacing his voice.

"You... answer my question! Why are you still here?"

Jack palmed his face. "Because you are."

"Wh-" She blinked, catching herself on the knife edge between tears of hysteria and explosive rage. Once, twice, three times, she blinked before stepping back from him. His gaze was locked to hers, steely eyes piercing through her facade of anger. She was... relieved? Why did she feel that when he watched her? Louise stepped back.

"I... I..."

Again, her brain began to actually think. He was probably a noble of higher rank than her. Now that she knew that, treating him like she had before would have been... well, inappropriate. But he was her familiar! She knew that because of the contract and the familiar runes and everything! However... however... Louise's knees hit the edge of her bed, and she softly fell onto her backside as she melted into the duvet.

"Uh... I..." Flustered, Louise backed up a step, her gaze falling away from anger and more into embarrassment as she tried to level her voice. "Its just... I..."

Like a broken record, Louise managed to stammer out a few more 'I's before falling silent. Just how was she supposed to act around him? Was... who...

"Louise." Jack's hand fell down on her shoulder, not roughly, but quickly enough that she felt a jolt of surprise shock through her body. She flinched away, her breathing quickening, eyes snapping up from the floor into his.

"What's wrong?"

She blinked, trying to salvage control of the situation, refusing to let herself behave so indecently. Louise fell back to her more demanding self, one that had trampled aside the will of servants and her father alike. "You... just who are you!"

"Jack."

"Auuugh! Not that again!" Louise slapped away his hand, then pointed a finger at his face accusingly. "Shooting fire like that, freezing those golems. All with just a snap of your finger!"

"Plasmids?"

"Yes, your 'plasmids'!" Louise snarled. Her anger was building up now, as she jumped – practically leaped – off the bed and glared up at Jack in a way that was more adorable than it was threatening. "What kind of a spell were they! You don't even speak any incantations, and I'm pretty sure you don't use that 'wrench' of yours as a foci!" Her face was getting closer now as Louise gestured wildly to emphasize her arguments. She raged and fumed, her face returning to the rosy red that indicated both embarrassment and rage, though now it was the latter. "No, you go ahead and break all the magical laws that I've spent years trying to follow, and trample all over them! You just wave your hands around and then woosh! Something gets set on fire! Or gets frozen in place! OR YOU SHOOT FOUNDER-DAMNED BEES OUT OF YOUR FINGERS! Just how do you do that sort of thing? Who... no, what are you!"

"I know you're Jack," She interrupted, "but what are you!"

"Splicer." He answered, almost immediately. "Jack." There were many things that described Jack of Rapture, but those were the most common (for him. Plenty of nicknames were abound in Rapture, but Jack was what he was most comfortable with.)

"Can. You. Just. Stop. It. With. The. One. Word. Sentences!" She ground out, snatching up her wand and lifting it up to point it at the man's face. She took a deep breath an-

Jack's scarred hand wrapped around hers, his fingers closing around the wand as he snatched it out of her hands with a sharp yank then placed it on the table behind him in one smooth motion.

"No." He warned. His voice was firm. Commanding. Louise's knees immediately began to tremble as Jack towered over her.

Louise's brain made a little snapping sound. "You... you..."

= _Location Unknown_=

Fluttering wings, a bird landed.

The pigeon's message was taken.

Hushed voices filled the room as the cipher was cracked.

One voice in particular sounded above the other hooded figures.

"Well _fuck_."

Parchment met fire as robes hustled across the floor.

= **Louise's Room**=

The door was thrown open, and Kirche appeared, with Tabitha in tow.

"Good morning~" She singsonged, the little musical note all but visible as she surveyed the scene. As usual, the tall and busty young woman was chirpy and glowing with her usual inner fire. Jack quickly appraised her as she burst into the room; her hair and face were as he had remembered before, but the buttons on the front of her shirt were undone, and her cloak was thrown back to expose more of her shapely torso and hips. Tabitha, in contrast, had the bulky cloth covering most of her body, in an almost protective fashion, as she held the staff loosely behind her back. The shorter of the two bowed her head slightly in greeting, then retreated back into the book that occupied her other hand. She used a corner of the book to push up her glasses, then sat down neatly on a stool near a corner that had been recently used by Jack to sleep in.

"Morning." Jack waved in greeting as he held Louise's wand up high above her reach. She decided to jump up, to try and snatch her foci back, an action which Jack simply sidestepped.

"Give it back! Give it back, I say!" The pinkette whined, already reduced to a childish mewling in between her desperate leaps to get at her wand.

Kirche, for once, was struck dumb by the scene before her.

She blinked a few times as Louise latched onto Jack's sweater and tried to pull him down or climb up (she couldn't tell which one was the pinkette's intention). The man stoically stepped back, dislodging the girl. She tried it again, only to miss her leap and instead end up clinging to his elbow, hanging off it. Louise was either very light or Jack was very strong (Kirche was more partial to the latter option), for him to not even budge like that with the added weight of the pink-haired girl.

Louise kicked at his knees, wriggling around like an adorable little monkey. "GIVE IT _BACK_!"

It was too much. The redhead burst into a laughing fit, leaning against the door for support as Tabitha facebooked with her little novel.

The Germanian pointed at Louise, after reducing her laughter down to mere giggles. "Oh my, this noisy in the morning already? And so violent, too. You two sure are going through this relationship fast. Fighting as well... hmm, did you miss out on the good bits and skip to the breaking-up part?"

"Kirche." Jack sighed, in part warningly as Kirche pressed fingers delicately to her lips and giggled.

"I'm sorry, I can't resist a jab while Louise is all cute and sniffly like this" Crossing the room, she stood beside the two, and the buxom redhead's arms wrapped around the pinkette, eliciting a series of half-heard noises that sounded suspiciously like grievous threats. The Germanian girl's response was simply to laugh and hug Louise even tighter to her ample chest. "You know, for a Valliere you're very huggable."

"Kirche." Jack repeated. "Let go."

"No."

And so, the clock tower struck ten, only partially masking the scream of Louise Valliere.

= **Olympus**=

"Augustus Sinclair here. Alright, so we have a hole. And Jack Ryan has disappeared into that hole. We have a rough location of where that hole opened, but we have no idea where that hole goes to, or if we open a hole in that location that it would lead to the same place."

Sinclair took a deep breath. "What do we know about these kinds of holes? How are they opened and can we find him? That's what we're going to find out. You are all gathered here as members of 'Project Orpheus'. Those familiar with Greek mythology will understand why. Many think Jack Ryan dead. We're going to bring him back, whatever method we have to use."

His gaze swept across the room, his eyes hard and calculating. Augustus Sinclair rarely if ever spoke like this, and his usual character of a laid back businessman was gone, replaced – perhaps masked over – by the calculating judge that was now standing before the group of three dozen or so scientists. "If you're staying - and I say to you now that there's a door right behind you if you want out and back into the halls - you're going to build us a machine or somehow open that portal and get Jack Ryan back to us."

He placed both his hands on the table, staring at the mahogany for a moment, before he sucked in another breath. "You're the best, as far as I can gather, and you've all got a reason to have a vested interest in seeing Jack back, because we ain't going to be around long if we can't get him home. So I hope you won't disappoint, since we'll be paying you a lot – both in money and in any supplies you might need for your homes and new communities – to bring a man back from wherever he's gone off to. I have a large check here waiting for each of you guys if Ol' Sally upstairs gets to shake hands with Jack Ryan, so if you don't mind, lets get started."

Sinclair stepped aside as a slideshow came up, the young woman at the projector slipping the first slide into place. It was a picture of the portal that Jack had disappeared into. There were a few outcries of disbelief and others of wonderment. "Applied Quantum Science is your field, so I'm not going to go into exposition about why or how we think Jack's gone. You've got all we have; tapes and copies of tapes of what we know happened, since he's very kindly disappeared to us on camera. That's the critical frame, though; there's a pattern around the edge, and we think that might have something to do with whatever took Jack."

"And what do you suppose we do about it?" Asked one. "Make an impossible machine from a box of scraps? Some of us are living in places that might as well be caves, Sinclair, we can't work miracles in there! We need proper labs – materials, experimental facilities..."

The businessman cut him off with a gesture, the simple raised palm asking for peace. "We've got access to any lab that would be relevant to this project, and we've got a lot of people backing us up as manual labor, suppliers for any materials you may need, engineers to build anything that pops up, and we've been given access to Big Daddies to keep us safe. Tenenbaum's gone full steam with this project, and she ain't going about it half-assed either."

"She's handed us Fontaine's labs on a silver platter, as well as most of the surrounding area. I expect everyone involved in the project to move into the new living quarters being built for us there, if you have family they're welcome to come along too, we've got plenty of room. Mind you, we're not forcing you into that place, but remember that there's at least a dozen Big Daddies being assigned to patrol and protect 'Hestia Homes', so its going to be as safe as you can be around here. Tenenbaum and her people aren't usually so generous with this kind of thing, so I'd say take the chance while its there."

= **Forest, outside of Tristain Academy**=

"Show me what you can do."

"What." No question mark. It was just a flat statement on Jack's part. The two stood outside of the Tristain Academy, which was hidden from view by a grassy knoll. They were on a similarly grassy dip in the ground, fenced in by a forest on one side, with its many and varied trees.

"You're... my familiar." Louise all but shouted, stomping her foot down with the confidence of a man on the wrong end of a Big Daddy's drill. "I... I want to know what you're capable of! J-just... just show me what you have already!"

"Why?" Jack queried.

"I just answered that! You're my familiar!"

"How?"

"How do I know that?" Louise guessed.

Jack nodded.

"B-because... because of the runes! On your left hand!" She pointed them out. Jack hitched up his sleeve, looking past the tattooed chains on his wrist to inspect the back of his palm, confirming her story again. A series of lines and dots, interconnected in a way that reminded him of letters and symbols. They were blocky and for the most part square, not rounded like the texts that he had seen around Rapture, but more... well, industrial. Louise took this opportunity to continue on with her 'you are my familiar' argument. "A familiar has those runes etched onto them when they are contracted by a mage, an I'm the only person who kissed you and that's part of the contract so... so... ah..."

Louise turned a bright red as she glanced away from Jack, who simply cocked his head to one side as the girl slowly turned back to face him again.

"A-anyway... also, a familiar can share their senses with their contracted mage, and the other way around works of course, since you sometimes need to... well, never mind! Look, let me show you!"

Picking up her wand, Louise made an elaborate motion in miniature, before whispering to herself, "I see, I hear."

Jack's brain throbbed for a second, and Louise winced in sympathetic synchronization as they both dropped to one knee. Vision swimming, Jack looked up to see himself and Louise, almost side by side but not quite. Their images in his sight were overlapping... It was almost like double vision, his eyes seeing two things at once. He closed his eyes, shutting off the headache-inducing imagery.

"Jack?"  
_"Jack?"_

And he was hearing an echo, too. It wasn't hard to guess that this was simply what he was hearing added to what Louise was hearing. And possibly a little delay before what she was hearing reached his ears. Jack shook his head, and opened one eye. Nope, that was 'Louise's' eye, and he could only see pitch darkness.

Switching eyes, Jack looked up to see Louise already reaching out for her dropped wand.

"Enough enough enough! Stop!"  
_"Enough enough enough! Stop!"_

The double vision and the reverberated hearing stopped immediately as the empathic bond collapsed and fell into silence and darkness. It wasn't so much the pain as the sudden release of it that caused him to sag to the ground.

Jack wasn't seeing anything out of his right eye anymore. He blinked a few times as he regained his feet, planting his feet firmly on the ground to keep himself from toppling over again. Like the time when he and the Little Sisters had found themselves in an ice cream store, his head felt like it had been frozen, an ice cube inserted and then shaken around. It was called brain-freeze, wasn't it?

"Ugh."

"O-okay... I'm never doing that again." Louise muttered to herself. "Too... ow. Was that how you see the world? What were those little bars? That blue and the red one... And what in the Founder's name is an 'Incinerate'?"

"Plasmid." Jack answered, holding out his hand. Plasmids were often dormant until he called them up into 'idle' state. The same kind of action as drawing his guns, really. He pumped his arm, drawing back his sleeve further, as the skin on his arm set alight, catching on fire as he let it burn. Skin wrinkled, dried, then began to scar over as patches of his hand were crisped to still-living cinders.

"Louise." Jack called out, as Louise stumbled back from the sudden appearance of flame.

Holding up his hand, he let the pinkette examine the flame-wreathed digits, the burning skin and the bright orange flames.

"Incinerate." The splicer said, as if giving introductions between two friends.

"I... I see..." She reached out, as if making to touch the flames, but Jack yanked his hand back before she could touch it. He shook his head firmly in response to her pouting.

"Dangerous." He warned as he crouched down. Jack pressed his hand into the dewy grass, and there was a brief flash and a sizzle. Steam rose up from underneath his fingers as Jack drew his plasmid-wrapped hand back, revealing a scorched handprint on the grass. "Burns."

Louise gulped.

"Wh- what else?"

"Winter Blast." He murmured, pumping his fist again to cycle through to the freezing plasmid. His teeth clenched, his arm muscles spasmed. Spikes of ice burst out from underneath his skin, spittles of blood splashed across the frozen skin as the wounds froze in place. Louise yelped out loud, jumping back a meter – two? - as she tried to distance herself from the arm.

"That's just crazy! Why did you do that?" She looked at Jack in askance. "You're a ma- Splicer! You control the elements! I-isn't that painful?"

"Yes."

"And... and yet you still do that?"

"You asked."

"I... I didn't ask you to do that to yourself!"

"Plasmids." Jack repeated. "Showing you."

"But..."

"Pain." He tapped his wrist for this one. "Not hurt."

There was a key difference there, between something that involved pain, and something that hurt. Pain was simply a reaction to events that was around you; if something was in pain, then it required attention of some sort. Pain could be dismissed, it could be ignored, pushed away or channelled into a single purpose. Pain was a tool. It was sometimes a good thing; pain meant that the limb was still there, pain meant that whatever hurt would mend eventually. Jack knew that this didn't apply for everyone, but for him that was the meaning of pain.

Hurting, though, was something else entirely. It was never a good thing, where pain would carry that duality, hurt was never a good thing. It was a pain of the mind, not of the body. Hurt started in one's chest, near the heart. It – like a sickness – would spread throughout. A body, a family, a city. Hurt would kill as surely as a bullet, if slower and more insidiously. Hurt was what brought Andrew Ryan down tot he bottom of the sea. Hurt killed so many, and Jack was never tolerant of it.

"More?"

"Y-you have more?"

A nod.

"Insect Swarm."

Jack readied himself, pumped his fist and prepared to activate the plasmid as he turned around to Louise, who was suddenly grabbing his arm.

"NO!" She shouted, screamed. Force rippled out of her in an ever-widening circle. Jack recoiled from the sudden jolt that shocked through their surroundings, and stepped back to face Louise. She stammered a little, but managed to still herself long enough to explain the reasons for her shouting.

"No! I... I detest those... they... they were those bees you used on Guiche, right? N-no, I'd rather not see them again... I... uh..." Those holes that appeared on his arms, those... those thing were crawling all around his hand... like it was their beehive or something. "C-can you show me something else, perhaps? Something a little more... elegant?"

"Cyclone Trap." A rarely used, but still useful plasmid given the right conditions. He pumped his fist, and then snapped his fingers to summon a small fountain of air, swirling around like a miniature tornado. Jack moved it around, adjusted its size, then settled it on the ground in front of a tree, ready to use it on himself. He ran towards the miniature vortex of cloud-like swirls, and then suddenly found himself flung up high. Louise was again surprised as Jack shot straight up from a small swirl that she had thought was weak.

Instead, now her familiar was dangling precariously from a tree branch.

Which was now bending and close to breaking.

Jack was thinking that maybe this wasn't quite as well thought out as he had hoped.

"Jack! Oh you have to be kidding me..."

= _Pigeon Loft_=

Noon. The pigeon had arrived back in the coop, marked as it was by the copper carry case that it wore around one leg. It had a light load, so had flown back quickly. Or her handler was closer to home than she thought.

Her mind quickly processed the cypher, and she whispered the message quietly to herself as she tossed the parchment onto the flames.

"Test him. Break the vault."

Damn. She hated being a guinea pig.

= **Forest**=

"So... ah..." Louise flushed red as Jack picked himself out of the bush, twigs and leaves sticking to his woollen sweater and hair. The splicer seemed more bothered by the shrubbery than she would have imagined for such a figure. It was almost funny, watching him disentangle himself from the tangled mass of limbs – both human and plant.

"Grah!" Jack slipped, a curved branch snatching at his collar and pulling him back in when it was suddenly pulled taut by his movements.

Well... try to disentangle himself from the bush.

It was a bush after all, and just a bush. It wasn't like it had asked to be landed on, either. Tripping over a root, the man stumbled but recovered, and then ended up snaring himself on a low-hanging branch and getting knocked over.

"Honestly." Louise groaned. "Its almost like you haven't been in a forest be- oh." The pinkette facepalmed. "Underwater. Right."

Jack rolled himself onto his back, and then made his way up into becoming upright. "Yeah."

"So you weren't lying, then? About you being from the sea?"

A shake of the head.

"What was it like, down there?" Louise stepped forward, as Jack patted himself down, and delicately placed herself on a fallen trunk.

"Dark." Jack muttered. "Cold."

Tunnels stretched out before him. Dark, and cold.

"Was it always like that?"

Jack shook his head, pushing away the encroaching memories of Rapture.

"No." They changed it. They changed Rapture's status quo of ADAM, death and insanity. "I... helped."

"Helped to?" Louise prompted.

"Change Rapture."

"You... were you... what did you change?"

"War."

"You started a war!" The pinkette shouted, alarmed.

Jack shook his head. "Finished."

_He had stopped a war?_

"And... how long ago was that?"

"A..." Jack searched for the right word. "A year?"

"And... your family? You said yourself that you had family, right?"

A nod. "My... family."

His little girls. Their Big Daddy.

Their... Father?

_Just like Andrew Ryan was yours._

Andrew Ryan. Jack had killed him with his bare hands – the golf club simply helped. The Cages at Apollo, those corpses... those still living, still breathing things that had once been human but were now just shapes in the bottom of a cage, lying in a pool of... the horrors of Fontaine's lab shot through his mind. His mind floated over the memories, the ghosts of the past. A broken body here, a failed experiment there. Parts, scattered all around. A glove here, with no arm attached to the hand inside. Targets, for test firings. Still tied to the posts where they had died.

Statues floated into his vision; not statues, but instead splicers, covered in plaster. Terrifyingly silent, they moved with eerie grace. Gene tonics absorbed sound, turned it into more kinetic energy; they were faster than anything he had ever fought before.

A grunt. His. Jack pressed palm to forehead, not in frustration but in pain this time.

He stumbled as he tried to restore his balance, fell to one knee as he continued to remember things that he had desperately wanted to forget about the underwater city that he was home to. Horrors of the past swam up, unbidden and unwanted. The shattered corpse of a Big Daddy floated before him, its globe-like helmet and back smashed in by the concrete that had rained upon it from above. In its arms, still alive and crying out was the thing that had caused its death: the Little Sister it had tried to protect.

Jack breathed out, snatched at the memory. A face? He didn't remember what she looked like then. Brown hair? Was it brown? Tied into a ponytail. With a ribbon made of a web-like seaweed. That girl. He had saved her, didn't he?

Didn't he?

"Are you my Daddy?"

Melissa?

He had taken from her. That slug. Right?

Jack tired to remember.

Melissa. Melissa was found in the Medical Wing. That was correct, wasn't it? She was there... was she?

"Jack?"

Jack pushed away the voice of Louise. Melissa was eight years old. He wasn't sure, but... that was how old she was, right? When he had pulled her screaming form from the embrace of the Big Daddy.

Right?

He tried to remember.

Her hair... her hair was...

"Jack!"

Louise's voice cut through his consciousness, and Jack briefly looked up at the girl before his body locked up, and the sensation of falling took over all else.


	11. Zero's Fight, Round One

**Chapter 11: Zero's Fight: Round One**

_Her..._

Her hair.

It... was...

Louise stared at him, horrified, as the man sunk to his knees and then toppled over.

Her familiar had just... what? _Fainted?_

She rushed over to him, kneeling by his side as his eyes snapped open, staring straight up into the sky. The splicer grit his teeth, sucked in a breath.

Louise's body shook in panic and fear. _Mustn't run away,_ she slowly repeated to herself. _Mustn't run away._Even as the pained man arched his back from a sudden jolt of pain, the pinkette remained at his side.

"J-j-jack?"

His torture renewed as his body began to shake and tremble. The man's left hand began to glow – the runes blazing a deep red as the lines of her familiar's runes began to distort. The young mage's mind raced, trying to comprehend what was happening. Her magic skill was admittedly nothing, absolutely zero (Louise mentally slapped herself for that comment), but her grasp of magical theory was enough for her to get near perfect theory grades. Few others had the motivation to seek out each little nook and cranny of magical applications and know them back to front in an attempt to learn their practical side. She closed her eyes, dredging through the many nights and hours reading and re-reading books, tying to find something that would give her the title of a dot mage - even if it was the lowest level of magic, it was at least a level of magic. That would have been enough.

Right. Senses. Louise focused, stilling herself – not an easy task – and opened her eyes, feeling the magic around her.

Raw energy was ripping through the man's body like a thunderstorm, or a forest fire. It vibrated through his essence, shaking his very soul as he tensed curling inwards on himself as he fought through the pain. Louise jumped back even as the intensity of the torture licked at her.

What must he be feeling?

"STOP THIS!" She commanded, whipping out her wand – for all the good that would do. "Familiar!"

Jack let out a long, ragged breath as the energies turned inwards. He was starting to master the pain now, forcing it down into the depths of his mind as he struggled for control. Louise's fresh panic banished all thought. What was happening! Louise squeaked, backed away, and tripped over her robe as she tried to put as much distance between herself and the splicer.

"Grrh..." The splicer clutched at his head, pushing Louise away as he rolled onto his front. He threw up, the smell of the half-digested breakfast welcome compared to the stench of Rapture's dumping grounds. He heaved once, twice, three times and brought up a second mouthful. Dimly, he became aware that Louise pressed a hand to her mouth, as if to hold in her own reflex to do the same thing. Memories – all bad ones – had overwhelmed him. Something didn't want him remembering the good times.

Jack doubled over slightly as his revelation caused another surge of bad memories.

Ugh.

"J-jack? Jack, what are you..." Louise jerked back as the splicer wretched once more, but he managed to keep it from passing through his lips. "Jack? JACK!"

Louise pointed her wand at him, as if expecting him to suddenly lash out. It wasn't hard to make that leap of logic, with him growling, pawing at the ground like some beast. His breathing was rattling his lungs, shaking his entire body as wild eyes tried to focus on something to keep him from remembering.

The pinkette stumbled back, her pink hair flowing to and fro as she tripped over knots of grass and small plants. Jack's focus narrowed, her worried expression dominating his senses as he pushed through the horrors of Rapture.

Silent statues. Blazing guns. Roaring Bouncers. The whine of drills, the click-thump of rivet guns. Howling splicers with flashing meat-hooks...

Louise's bright pink eyes cut through them all as a second ripple of energy washed over the small clearing. She was building up power again? Everything was thrown in to chaos as the two of them struggled to find control, only to send their powers and memories overlapping.

A tree? A fall. _Louise's memories?_Jack staggered backwards as an explosion cut through the room, shards of glass flying everywhere as the mirror shattered into a thousand glass knives, the table a million tiny spears.

Pain. Pain and blood.

Falling onto her back, Louise's last fragment of that memory was a charred wand, tumbling through the air.

Smack.

"Jack! What's wrong? Damnit... tell me!" She was in front of him now, almost close enough for reach out and touch. Wait. He had staggered back just then. She had reached out to him. Well, more than reached out. His cheek stung. "What's wrong? Where does it hurt? I can't see!"

"Ungh... cheek."

A confused "What?", followed by an embarrassed "Oh!"

This was bad. Nothing had... what was... was something deliberately touching off these nightmares? Like a match thrown into a bed of dry grass. Jack muttered something, then let himself fall backwards to rest, his hand pressed against his face.

A third pulse pushed against his chest. Suddenly, a second figure appeared in his vision. A Bouncer type Big Daddy crouched down as a Little Sister scrambled up its arm, to rest on the shoulder as she clung to the grille set around its globe-like head. He could see what Louise was seeing, and Louise was seeing what he saw.

His agony doubled again as the fourth throb of pain began to pick away at his memories.

The girl's knees buckled as she watched him pick his way through a massacre.

Fontaine's 'front lawn' to his many pet projects, the lab-blocks set into the bedrock of Rapture itself, was covered in blood. Splicers lay on the chewed up street, dead to a man. They were young – splicers that were just out of their teens, ready to impress the Big Man, get some money rolling in for more splicing, so that they could be more use to Mr. Fontaine and... well, that was the story, anyway. A few were simply dead where they stood, frozen into statues which remained frozen as they suffocated inside. Others were not even whole any more. Modern weapons tended to do that, especially when those weapons were chainguns and Big Daddies deployed against squishy leadheaded splicers.

Almost in tears, the girl scrambled back from Jack, who was pushing straight through a pile of sandbags, splicer corpses impaled to the rebar spikes set into the wall, his wrench carefully displacing each one as they passed by. More were impaled behind the wall, where a telekinesis plasmid had been put to terrifying effect.

"Oh... oh Founder..."

More dead, laying about as the trees around the real world warped themselves into gnarled copper columns – pipes, she realized. Bodies mashed and cut and burnt into the turf outside of an equally scarred building, styled after a manor. Jack hefted the shotgun, blasting a flying sputtering golem that was spewing fire onto men. Screams echoed through their memories as the men burned, Jack shifting through his pack for a vial of blue liquid, pushing it into his arms to let those spikes of ice spring out of his wrist. He froze his own men, desperately trying to put out the flames, to be rid of the smell of cooking flesh.

The worst of the fighting had been like this... ADAM preserved bodies well, and it would baffle people picking through fresh corpses to learn that they had been like this for months.

Jack looked through Louise's vision, watching himself, swimming in and out of vision as he cut his way through a bulkhead. He stepped back, still ignoring the floor of half-rotted bodies scattered about behind him, as the rattle of gunfire and the Big Daddy's roar echoed through the pipes.

He watched as Louise threw up again, the images of the broken houses and equally broken bodies that had been contained within still scored into her mind. The smell of the Big Daddies, the taste of death in the air... and the unearthly silence that the place contained...

The pinkette composed herself unsteadily, her face twisted with disgust at her actions.

"H-how?" She stammered, trying to find anything to distract her from having to remember that. Jack was sitting up again, melancholic as he shifted through those memories like Tabitha read through a book.

"Just... just what were they?"

"Splicers." He explained. Louise nodded.

"Wait a minute here..."

She continued to press him on the splicers, and Jack – slowly, as if he were panning for that golden word amongst a river of adjectives and nouns – explained what she had seen. He spoke of each man that she saw – Sal, Ollie, Colin – in the space of a few words. But they were high praise indeed from the King of Rapture. Trust worthy. Reliable. Cautious.

"So these..." Louise couldn't believe what he was telling her. A city underwater... at war.

"And... and those knights?"

"Knights?"

"The ones that I saw! They had armor all over them!" Louise explained. "Those things that carried around the little girls... and had... had those big drills."

"Ah." Jack nodded, comprehending. "Big Daddy."

"Those were Big Daddies? Those... things? Th-they weren't human, were they?"

"No." The splicer admitted. "Were."

"Were? As... as in, they were human? They used to be...? Oh... I... I see..."

The pinkette cradled herself, trying to comfort her mind as it raced along possibilities. Her mind was branded by the twisted corpses. Was that what Jack had come from? A world of dead bodies, stinking tunnels and shadowy rooms? He was a leader of men – no doubt about that. And...

And she had brought him here.

The bile was still clinging to the insides of her mouth as she leaned against a tree for support. Jack began to sit up, head still pounding. He was clearing his mind, shaking it back and forth as he pressed his palm against this head. The splicer had it idling on his 'Winter Blast' plasmid, cooling his brain and numbing what pain was there.

"You... that was your home?" Louise finally asked.

"..." Jack remained silent, unsure of how to answer.

The pinkette pressed on. "Was that how you lived?"

"For a while." It was quite some time, that was how Rapture knew of Jack. A raider, trawling through the forgotten parts of the city, recovering technology and luxury items that were once taken for granted, then lost to the depths of the sea and war, and then were rediscovered by the silent hero of the underwater city. Restoration work made hotels livable, and people flocked to him from hiding... it was surprising, how many people had actually survived the Rapture civil war. While Fontaine and Ryan were busy ripping up their own powerbases to strike at the other, the rest of the population had remained hidden, stockpiling whatever they could and occasionally making forays out into the 'wilderness' to scavenge for food...

Jack shook his head. "But not anymore."

Louise stared at him, but Jack didn't elaborate as he adjusted his wrench-holster-scabbard-thing, and then walked away from her, angling back towards the Academy.

They made their way across the fields and paths again, Jack unsteady on his feet at first, but recovering quickly as they continued along. Louise watched the man carefully as she glanced back towards him. He seemed to be focusing intensely upon his memories, the spinning currents of his mind all but visible to her as the brown-haired splicer ran his hand thoughtfully against a line of scars along his arm. He briefly glanced at the pinkette, only a few paces further up the road.

She didn't know what to make of his sudden jerk in the opposite direction.

Muttering to herself, Louise resigned herself to silence as they made their way across the fields. Evening, and by extension the evening meal, was fast approaching. They were, thankfully, making good time through the hills and meadows surrounding the dark grey castle. Louise squinted and pursed her lips as she regained her bearings, and then strode confidently onwards.

Jack was half asleep on his feet, it seemed, his mind wandering to wherever his thoughts took him as she glanced back at the man she had summoned. He was scratching at the back of his left hand, she realized, at the familiar runes now branded onto his skin, something which would mark him as hers forever.

Had our roles been reversed. Her traitorous imagination mused. What would she have been like?

Afraid. So very afraid. She was barely reaching marrying age, but that stupid part of herself reminded her that she was even less than that. A girl such as her, being put under the service of a man she had never known of – never even met - before... her freedom and – Louise shuddered – her body now forfeit towards a contract that she had never signed but nevertheless found branded upon her very own skin...

The girl hugged herself as Jack blazed a trail for them in the gathering darkness, shivering from an unseen chill that nevertheless shook her body.

Such was the curse of a different perspective, she presumed.

How easy it had been, to simply spout 'familiar! Master! Familiar! Master!' like Cattleya's pet parrot with its desire for biscuits... Ugh. Stupid conscience.

Louise sighed bitterly, grimacing as she listened to the echoes of her frustration.

Jack turned around briefly, arching an eyebrow as he continued walking.

"W-what happened, then?"

"Hm?"

"H-how did it start? The fighting, I mean. Do... do you remember? How it all started?"

"No."

"It must have been a long war, then..."

A shake of his head.

"Short." He cut in. "... two years."

So... her familiar was far from a commoner. Not like some peasant boy that the girl had first suspected him to be. He was a warrior, a soldier, at the very least. Though his weapons were unusual (What was that metal thing on his back, anyway? She knew its name, a wrench, but...), he was no doubt competent, seeing as he dismantled that idiot Guiche's golems so quickly and... well, that meant that he was ridiculously strong, right? So... what was he?

Louise licked her lips. She wanted to find out more about this man.

"Oh... so how did you... how did you become involved in that?"

"I... we... fell."

"Fell?"

A nod. "Plane."

"A... plain? You managed to fall off a flat piece of land? Was there a cliff? Or were you in... wait, you didn't happen to fall off Albion into the sea, did you? Was that how it started?" She asked, all but shouting as she dug for more details.

"Albion?"

"You first." Louise insisted. "What is this 'Airplain'?"

"Flies." Jack pointed upwards, at a distant cloud. "People inside... for traveling."

"... oh! You mean an airship? We have those!"

Nodding as the girl began to excitedly relate one tale of an airship ride she had undertaken with one 'Henrietta', Jack sat back as the girl rattled on, and waited patiently for her indication to continue.

"Well... what about the airship?" Louise queried.

"Crashed."

The pinkette paled. "Impossible." Louise scoffed. "You can't just break those kinds of enchantments to bring down an airsh-... wait, these are your airships... uh... so I suppose things would be different... but how would they be? Well, anyway, go on..."

Jack frowned. Should he be insulted?

"There was lighthouse..."

"You crashed into a lighthouse!" Louise shouted. "Was the pilot aiming for it or something?"

"Near it." Lowering his hands from his ears, Jack quickly corrected the pinkette, though he, the pilot, didn't deny that he had not been aiming for the water. "Many died."

"I suppose there would have been... but you survived, obviously. And then what happened?"

"Rapture happened." Jack answered. He began to tell Louise everything he remembered about himself in quick summary format, leaving out the details (the more uncomfortable events he also left out) of his subsequent rampage across Rapture at the bidding of his 'financial' father, Fontaine. From the moment he stepped foot on Rapture, all the way to the last few days before he was swept up here to this place called Tristain, and by extension 'Halkeginia', Jack supplied Louise with all the relevant details that he could think up of. In all, perhaps four months worth of events condensed down to three-quarters of an hour's worth of talking in half-broken sentences. He found himself stumbling, his voice slipping back to that mangled gurgle that was a Big Daddy's voice, which sent shivers down both their spines as Louise attempted to fill in the gaps in his narration, her line of questioning allowing Jack to give simple nods or negative gestures to get the meaning across.

The pinkette Louise, for her own part, was admirably stoic about learning the history of Rapture. The civil war was brutal, he emphasized this on her, simply because of the lack of rules; anything was a target, anyone was a combatant. Louise stewed on that for a while, her mind drifting to the memories that she had extracted from Jack's mind. Ugh. She disliked that word. Extracted. Like she was some kind of thief. The pinkette frowned at this. Extracted... maybe... glimpsed? Glimpsed. Accidental viewing. She liked that. Better than extracted. Good. The glimpses of Rapture were starting to have context now. Meaning. For her, at least, she knew why she remembered roasting a hallway of men and woman alive.

She shivered.

Her familiar had blood on his hands.

Frowning, she wondered if that were something she should be relieved about, knowing that her familiar was – at least – able to protect her, or that she should be concerned – if she pushed him far enough – that it would be her blood that he would find soaking into his palms.

Ridiculous. A familiar ever attacking its own master?

That was impossible.

Then again, whispered Louise's conscience, so was the idea of him using magic.

A second, more bitter hiss made the girl shiver. And being much better at it than I am, too...

She quickly glanced at Jack, her skin suddenly crawling from the idea of the splicer turning his cold fury towards her. The tingle on her skin seemed so oddly like a thousand bugs swarming around her, the memory of the buzz from Jack's duel-ending attack causing her to jerk, her entire body shuddering as if to shake off those thousands of legs, closing the pinkette's eyes on reflex as she exhaled sharply..

Louise stumbled her next step, but caught herself.

Oh Founder... please never let Jack be my enemy.

Jack turned around, trying to puzzle out the cause of her sudden movement.

The girl grimaced, and then ignored him.

Stupid Jack. Making her emotions all knotty like this.

In silence, the two returned to the Academy.

The rain, it seemed, was appropriate, drowning out the noise of their thoughts as they tried to puzzle the other out.

**= Tristain Academy, front gates. An hour past sunset. =**

The gates of the Tristain Academy were open, with no real need to close it; the country was, at least, in times of peace. Even so, Louise still had to wave at the sleepy guard watching them with his unloaded crossbow in his lap, though it was a simple matter of formality. Ticking boxes, making sure that policies were adhered to.

Even so, Jack tensed as they made it halfway across the academy, with the snap-crack of splitting stone alerting him to... wait, what was happening? The splicer whirled around, tracing a circle around Louise as he sought out the source of the noise.

It came from beyond the rain, . "Wh-"

Louise saw his feet spread out, balancing himself as he slid into a half-crouch, hand going back to smoothly draw the wrench from its holster, the heavy club resting in his hands as he let out a loose breath.

She felt it a moment later, the wash of magic as it rushed over them.

His body visibly jumped, every hair on the back of his neck prickling as he whirled around on the spot to face the source of the pulse that was detectable to even him, his wrists and fists bursting into flame and crackling with an ember orange glow when he flexed his fingers. Jack reached for his wrench as the walls of the academy crumbled with a ear-shattering snap. But instead of tumbling to the ground, the stone was instead moving upwards, as if in defiance of gravity, gathering and re-shaping themselves into a massive man-shape, drawing upon the turf below and the walls behind it as the rain soaked through the mud and stone. Hissing as rain splashed across white-hot skin, Jack saw the construct's massive shadow standing up in the rain. There was movement as the thing began to walk, accompanied by a flash of lightning. A cry of some sort rumbled through the grounds, following in pace with the thunder, and then there was a hissing noise, like steam escaping from a kettle.

The golem rose from its knees and began to plod forward. Slowly, its massive arms dragging along the ground as its knuckles scarred the earth beneath it.

"Louise." He murmured quietly, reassured by the fact that nobody was going to overhear them in the rain. "That's normal?"

The pinkette stared at him, as if asking 'are you stupid or something?', but saw that the man was asking her in all seriousness about what was happening in front of the two.

"No. No it isn't." She instead answered, glancing at the splicer as he began to trot along the walkway, following the earth-bound beast as it began to knuckle-walk across the ground, its movement slow, ponderous, carefully measured.

Controlled, he realized.

And if it were controlled...

Jack broke out into a sprint, stumbling over a shattered pillar and hurling himself behind it as the golem simply walked into a fountain, crushing it underfoot and sending a geyser of water up into the air.

Breathless, Louise stepped back as the towering figure of the golem shook the ground with its first step out of the turf and onto the stone pavement of the Academy's central keep, and split its head open into two parts, revealing a throne-like seat. From above, a mage dropped down, and walked over to sit on it, the expensive-looking parasol held daintily against her shoulder as she carefully – and infuriatingly casually – wiped the seat clean and sat herself on it.

Louise gawked, jaw hanging open as the golem began tearing at the inner walls of the keep.

"She... did that?"

"Presentation." Jack murmured, more groaned as he shifted his balance again, trying to angle himself. This mage was already starting to remind him of Cohen in that sense. Presentation was everything, the maniac musician had told him. It was all well and good to be skilled, but presentation was what sold a show. So he began to creep up on her, moving from pillar to pillar as the golem's arm formed a giant spike (rather than the crushing hammer-like fists it had used before) and stepped back. It lunged, but that tactic proved fruitless – the mage shouted out something in frustration as the spike shattered against the walls.

From above, even through the rain, the voice of frustration carried. "Tsch. Physical force my ass."

Jack frowned as he identified the voice; female, frustrated, and quite frankly bitchy. He turned back, aiming back to where he had left Louise behind at the gate.

Well... she wasn't there anymore. The splicer scowled as he looked around, searching for the girl as the golem continued to work through various shapes to batter at the wall.

Louise stepped forward to challenge her, wand raised.

"Just who are you!" She shouted, using the want to point at the woman atop the earthen construct.

A soft giggle teased at their ears as the voice's owner laughed at Louise's expense."Someone you leave alone, if you know what is good for you."

Silhouetted by the haze of the rain, the large golem turned around to resume its work of battering the walls. A crack was beginning to form.

Louise let out an indignant snarl at having been ignored to off-handedly. "Hey! I'm talking to you!"

"And I'm not listening to you!" Singsonged the thief.

"Yes, yes you are!"

There was a long-suffering groan from the young female burglar. "... can we be a little less childish and petty, please?"

"Stop what you're doing!" Louise shouted in response. "I'm warning you!"

The woman atop the golem whirled around, though Jack noted that the golem itself wasn't stopping, merely slowing to keep the ride comfortable. "I should be warning you, little girl. Just go back to your room!"

"Shut up!" Screeched the younger of the two. "You're not my mother!"

"I certainly hope not."

Jack took the opportunity to sucker-punch the woman, the chunk of wall ripped free from the wall, then telekinetically hurled towards the cloaked figure standing on top of the golem.

The construct was fast; it shrugged its shoulders, raising its arm as it did so, and the projectile rubble bounced almost harmlessly off the thing's elbow as it swatted the stone out of the sky, sending it crashing into the tower.

"Fireball!"

Louise's wand sparked, connecting – briefly – the golem's shoulder with the top of her wand, then continuing the spark to the tower behind it. The spark seemed to ignite the shoulder, creating a massive explosion (funnily enough devoid of all fire) that all but tore the arm off its shoulders. The grey golem staggered from the force of the blow, even as its controller fought for her balance, as stone and mud scattered through the air.

Then, the spark connecting the shoulder to the side of the tower lit up, and the tower's walls were caved in by a similar explosion.

Stones – ranging from barely noticeable specks to tiny fingernail sized projectiles to chunks as large as his head - rained down around them as Jack grabbed the screaming Louise and dragged her away from the falling masonry. Blocks of marble pounded the ground, shaking them off balance as Jack resorted to throwing the young girl bodily across the courtyard. A chunk of rock caught his shoulder, spinning him around. He grunted, stumbled, then tripped as Louise tumbled away. She let out a gasp of her own as she hit the ground clear of rocks, and rolled a few times as more of the stone chunks hammered the ground.

"Jack of Rapture!" Called out the thief. "How nice to see you this evening."

Wait... what?

Jack picked himself up as Louise curled up into a smaller ball, his arm shifting from the burning arms into the bloody frostbite that was the Winter Blast plasmid.

"Oh? I see... you're trying to use water magic on me? I'll have you know, Jack of Rapture, that I am too a water mage! A square-class mage stands before you now!"

There was a crackle of ice as it formed, the heat sucking itself out of the golem's arm as the air swirled around and towards the rapidly growing spikes of ice, locking its damaged shoulder into place and knocking the gathering stones out of the air. Foquet of the Crumbling Dirt snarled in frustration as the shoulder separated from the torso, shifting the balance of the golem.

"No matter! Hah, in fact..." the thief sneered, "you've given me another weapon."

The golem seized its former wrist, and slapped the palm of the severed arm onto its shoulder socket. With a muttering of her rock-shaping wand, the stone there fused and compressed into another joint, rendering Louise and Jack's attack redundant.

And, as it now held a giant fist made of ice spikes, actually working against them.

Jack turned and ran as the golem began to lumber forwards, building up speed as it charged the splicer, who immediately swung to the right, forcing the golem to begin moving in a curve – a maneuver that cost it some of its speed. Jack ducked his head as he broke out into a full sprint, something that he had never done on level ground before, though the scattered masonry helped recreate the feel of the rubble-choked hallways of Rapture. Weaving through the tower's former shell, Jack ducked around the stone chunks that were picked up and launched at him by the golem and its mistress.

Damnit, he needed to retaliate.

The spikes of ice simply popped out of his arm as he shifted to a more neutral plasmid, telekinesis. Jack turned, his arm sweeping across left-to-right as he completed a full three-sixty pirouette to swat a half-dozen head-sized stones out of the air.

"What? Earth magic too? J-just how many elements do you command, damnit!"

Heedless of the thief's frustrations, Jack shifted gears again and worked his way around the tower, putting the massive structure between the two of them as he searched for other options.

Fire... the dirt and stone would be damaged, but fusing the material together with lasers would only strengthen the golem. Ice was too EVE extensive for him to consider it; the massive blast of ice alone had cost him nearly a quarter of his EVE, for the range and power he had been forced to reach out. Cycling through his possible plasmids, the splicer frowned. He wasn't suited for this kind of fight. Where was his projectile launchers, damnit?

Damn. Damn damn damn. Jack curled his right fist into a tight ball as he shifted his heels on the ground.

A flash of pink shifted behind him.

Louise... Wait, what was Louise doing?

The pinkette grit her teeth, as she clutched her shoulder; the stone that glanced against it wasn't injuring, but painful. She staggered to her feet, surveying her surroundings; shattered stone, some of it so heavy that they were sunk halfway into the ground when they had finally fallen.

She had failed.

Again.

Damn it!

Louise stood up, wand in tightly curled fist, as the golem continued its pursuit of the splicer.

"Hey! Don't leave me behind!" Louise shouted, although privately she hoped that the would leave her behind; she wasn't even a combatant, and even if she did have a wand...

Even if she did have a wand, her magic itself was useless to her.

Because she was Louise the Zero.

Not a single spell properly cast spell to her name... Jack had found that out yesterday, during the demonstration in front of Miss Cherevuse, that all she could do was create explosions. What kind of pride or dignity would she have, if her familiar – no matter how exotic he was – knew more magic that she did? Humiliating didn't even begin to cover it.

The wand in her hand all but burned as she raised it at the golem.

"Fireball!"

Another explosion ripped through the air, this time detonating too close to the pinkette to do any real harm to the massive earthen construct before her, instead cratering the ground just in front of it – only a handful of feet away from Jack. The man rode the shockwave, sending him tumbling across the field. Quickly leaping back up, he managed to avoid the next spiked attack that hammered the ground. The young girl almost lost her balance as the ground shifted underneath her.

Louise stepped back slightly, preparing to run, as Jack and the golem settled in, squaring off in front of each other. The two were staring each other down as Foquet focused intently on the small crater that Louise had created on the surface of the wall.

"Hmm... tear it out? That works, to. The golem shifted around, as if responding to the thoughts and ideas of the mage, as Jack began to trot across the devastated garden-courtyard, wrist slung low to his side as he worked his way around into the colossus' shadow.

He leaped, riding the funnel of air that appeared suddenly underneath him. Carried by the cyclone trap twenty feet up into the air, Jack landed on the fused shoulder of the golem, wrench at the ready.

"Are you stupid!" She screeched, raising her wand. "I've control of this stone. What kind of idiot willingly climbs onto a mage's golem?"

Handprints formed on the stone underneath him, each glowing outline shining bright gold as Jack was lit up by the magic. The stone inside the handprints exploded upwards as one, each boneless arm twisting in the air around him, grasping and holding at Jack's legs, even as his wrench blurred to keep the stone from encasing his arms. He tripped as a stone-shod fist smashed into the back of his knee, sending him tumbling to the ground. His wrench was ripped from his grasp, and cast off to the night.

Louise shouted out in alarm, a yowl of protest as the wrench landed no more than a few inches from her.

"Hah." Gloated the thief as the splicer's limbs were encased in stone. "You lose. Now onto my work..."

The golem drew back its fist – not incidentally the one that Jack was all but tied to – and punched the tower.

**= Tristain Academy, Artifact Vault. 24 km/ph =**

Being punched through a wall was never something one became used to, ever.

The golem's fist made a clean hole, an was thankfully larger at the knuckles than at the shoulder – that meant no squishy thing getting scraped off by the wall.

But, then again, he was also thankful of the fact that the stone crumbled as soon as it entered the room, returning to the individual chunks no longer held together by the magic mortar that bound it up into a humanoid shape.

With a cry of surprise echoing behind him, the splicer tumbled across the stone-littered floor, skidding to a halt as he hit a pillar.

That, at least was something more familiar to him.

Stale air, however, was something that Jack was intimate with.

Inside the sealed portions of Rapture, he had breathed stagnant atmospheres countless times; the coppery taste of scrubbed air was familiar to him, as was the dead stench of dust-filled apartments-turned-tombs. The greasy feel of spilled oil, or the more pungent assault on the nose that was a rotting corpse, Jack had come across many sealed rooms in the resurrection of Rapture.

This place was no different, except perhaps the lack of the scent of death and decay in the air.

Having taken advantage of Louise's spell, the large golem had punched through the outer wall, and Jack had come along for the ride. Thankfully, the massive chunks of ice gauntleting the wrist of the golem were hardened enough to have deflected the loose chunks of rock away from the splicer clinging to the giant construct's forearm.

Now he was in this musty place, coughing out the dust that had been scattered about from the impact. Staggering to his feet, Jack stumbled deeper into the room, away from the large hole in the wall as the golem's fist fizzled and crumbled to dust, swept around the by whatever forces swirled around inside of this place.

Shelves, stacked with boxes and crates and chests, each labelled with a small square of white card, filled the room. Some had been knocked over, revealing contents that were more or less uniform; spheres of all kinds were scattered about from one crate, while cubes spilled out from another. One had been cracked, a ghostly image forming as whatever essence kept inside spilled out of the hole in the glass globe. Shifting his feet, Jack turned around as what remained of the massive arm drew back to admit its robe-cloaked controller stepped inside, delicately placing her – and he was pretty sure that it was a her now – feet on the newly violated ground. She scowled at the glowing circles inside of the walls, the rune-writing still glowing a deep amber.

"Anti-magic wards? Of course. Silly of me to think that there would be none." Sounding dejected, more furious, the mage swept her arm across the room in an angry gesture. The wards disappeared. Instantly, the shelves and cases around the room brightened as a half-hundred objects lit up with their own magical power. The thief cocked her head to one side, and turned around.

"Oh. You survived? I've had just about enough of you now..." She deadpanned as he staggered to his feet. The mage brandished her iron wand again, drawing the stones in the place into two compact, man-sized golems. She breathed one order. "Kill him."

The mage then set about looting the place, tossing items almost randomly onto the waiting palm of the larger golem. Obediently, the iron golems with their clawed hammers lurched forward as Jack checked his surroundings, his eyes dazzled by the variety of the artifacts surrounding him. Ducking under a blow from the first sledgehammer, he threw himself backwards as a second blow cracked the stone floor underneath.

It was like fighting Guiche all over again, except this time the controller was competent.

Damn.

The first golem swung horizontally this time, and the second followed through with a crushing vertical blow that caused him to stagger as the shock of the impact threw him off balance and rattled objects off the shelves around him. These golems acted in tandem, as a team. Guiche, for comparison, sent the golems to fight as individuals. A third golem, this one made of mud, leaped down from above and tried to pin him down. Just fighting it was an uncomfortable prospect, with the mud already soaking into his clothes and hardening into an inflexible shell. The splicer lit his arms alight, and embraced the construct, the heat of the Incinerate! Plasmid evaporating all the surface liquids as his fingers blazed white hot. The 'baked' golem was rolled off him, just in time for a hammering blow from one of the original pair of golems to land. Jack managed to roll away from one, but the second caught his left arm as he tried to push off it to get up. Bone cracked as the Armored Shell tonic tried to displace the force of the impact, but it still hurt like a bloody bitch. His right arm snapped down and slapped the ground, sending spikes of ice shooting up to encase the golem within an icy prison.

He was defenceless to the third one as it appeared behind him.

Damn.

"You're interesting, Jack of Rapture. I admit to that." Purred the mage-thief. "But you can't stand in my way. I cannot allow that."

A golem's foot connected with his desperately crossed arms, sending him flying across the room. Jack's back met an ancient shelf, tipping relics and artifacts of supposedly immeasurable value onto the ground.

One rolled into his palm.

Jack felt a rush of heat, a surge of something coursing through him. It was both familiar and alien at the same time, and he found himself staring at the orb in his hand. It was the size of a baseball, mostly blue with an orange plate affixed to one side. A green symbol glowed with faint power as Jack's thumb hovered over it.

"What? The runes? Now!"

He pressed down on the stud, hearing a sharp hiss as the orb exploded into a cold fire that sucked the heat from his hand. The flaming ball was starting to whine, and Jack knew that it was time to say goodbye to it. He hurled it at the third golem, the mysterious orb trailing a bright blue streak as it sailed through the air, and then stuck onto the golem's 'face'.

Perfect.

Now what?

Wait...

That whine... uh oh.

Jack threw himself aside as the noise from the orb grew louder and louder, its screech pitching ever higher as the glow briefly intensified, and then a small beep confirmed his suspicions.

It was as if a dragon roared beside their ears, at the same time breathing its fire as a flare as bright as the noon-time sun blazed, consuming the construct in a blue-white conflagration, the heat searing to Jack even as he crouched behind a pillar.

"Holy sh-"

Secondary explosions drowned him out as other volatile substances exploded. Jack saw petroleum leaking across the floor for a brief moment before it was set alight, the fires working their way up the shelves, though none of the flames touched the wooden caskets that were stored on them. Interesting.

Water began to pour down from above, soaking everyone.

"A fire suppression system? Water summoning..." Murmured Foquet. "You're lucky, Jack of Rapture. Very lucky."

Ignoring her, Jack finished groping around behind him and trying to guess the function of the metal sphere he had picked up; it was smaller, the size of a walnut maybe, and its top half was colored a bright red, the bottom white, with a black band separating the two rows. A push of a white button caused it to explode into something of a larger size, that perhaps of a tennis ball. Jack, startled, hurled the second orb that he had found towards Foquet.

The ball smacked into the mage's chest, before splitting open suddenly and enveloping the woman in a haze of red light. Foquet shrunk for a moment before the ball drew in the light – and the mage – along with it like water being sucked down a drain.

The ball dropped to the floor, pulsating as it shook back and forth, as if struggling.

A moment later, the ball quivered, then exploded again, revealing a stunned and choking female mage.

"W-what... what was that!" She screeched, ducking back as a bookshelf gave way, spilling a collection of gemstones across the floor. The golems – he wasn't sure if they were new or one of the older ones – gathered up behind her, crouched low to protect the mage from any more intruders.

Jack shrugged, the gesture followed by raising his fists palms up, leaving no doubt that he had no idea what he had been doing.

"... really? You're just throwing random priceless artifacts at my golems?"

Jack nodded.

"You do know that those were, and I repeat myself, priceless artifacts that you just destroyed, right?" She pointed out, angrily jerking a thumb at the shelf that now bore the outline of several artifacts and one now-atomized golem. Jack stared at it for a moment, then back at the enraged woman.

"Weapons." He deadpanned. "Not artifacts. Used, not stored."

Foquet of the Crumbling Dirt pressed her middle and index finger to her brow as her thumb massaged her temple.

"Incredible. Truly incredible." She growled to herself, this time directing her words towards Jack. "Your stupidity, I mean."

Laughter rang out from around them, as something clicked and scraped across the floor.

Metal on leather. A sword being drawn.

Both combatants tensed, grimacing as their attention was split between the intruder and their current foe.

"AHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!" The voice was old. Jack knew, without even seeing its source, that the owner of the voice carried with him – and it was definitely male – the weight of many years. Like an old man, it rose up and chuckled again. "So the kid does know what he's talking about!"

"Who is that!" Challenged Foquet, her iron wand again coming up.

There was an offended 'humph!' from the darkness. "Girlie, give the boy some credit. He's right. Weapons are weapons, nothing else. They're used, not paraded around or stuck in a musty little corner like I have been."

The creak of metal was followed by a crash.

"Boy. Come here."

Jack frowned, but complied with the order. He shuffled across the floor, eyes never leaving Foquet as she gnashed her teeth.

"You're pretty good, kid." The voice praised. "I think I'll let you wield me. Its been too, too long since I've been out..."

The splicer reached the source of the voice, and stopped.

Wait.

What?

He risked a quick glance around as Foquet remained rooted to where she stood, trying to find the source of the voice. A box lay upended on the ground, its velvet inner revealed to the world as its contents – a large sword – sat where it had been scattered.

The sword was interesting. Not like the ornate ones found in the lobbies of the mansions belonging to Rapture's elite. This one was plain steel and unpolished brass, wrapped in black leather. No gold, no jewels, no ornate etchings. Jack knew then, that this was a sword made for combat. A part of the sword – something near the crossguard – shifted around, clacking like a puppet's mouth in time with the voice. "Yeah. The sword. Pick me up, boy. C'mon, its been a while since I've been in a fight. You're strong, and you're not some stuck-up brat."

"Heh." The sword gleamed, despite the lack of light in this dark corner of the vault. "Its about time."

Foquet's golems exploded into action.

Jack chose.

He dove.


	12. Zero's Fight, Round Two

Jack rolled to help cover the rest of the distance between him and the blade, and then dove for it, feeling his heel being slapped around by the golem's fist as he did so. Tumbling through the air just above the ground, the splicer scrabbled on foes and fingers, avoiding the golems as best he could, before reaching out for the ancient blade. The sword slipped into his grip, almost as if leaping off the floor to meet his clawing hands.

Considering that it was talking to him, that wasn't altogether that surprising, actually.

And suddenly the world became different.

Everything slowed. The falling orbs, the etched jewels, the tattered books and yellowing scrolls. All of it slowed as Jack's shoulder graced across the ground. He could read the title of a book the length of the room away, though the curiously alphabet-like words were foreign to him. He could feel each pebble as it was crushed between his tonic-armored shoulder and the ground, hear the crackle and crunch as the golems pounded across the floor. The smell of worn leather wrapped around the handle of the blade. His breathing, raspy and harsh. And through this all, the thudding heartbeat of the thief, his prey.

Jack rolled. The world returned to normal.

The splicer jinked to one side as a golem bodyslammed the ground where he had been, cratering the stone underneath. Wreathed in Winter, the left hand of Jack slapped down and froze the golem into place. He jumped back as another used its fallen fellow construct as a springboard, propelling itself at the man with the sword, the spiked arm drawing back as it prepared to jab him in the stomach with a two-foot spike. Jack slapped the spike out of the way, then simply punched through the dirt-y head, freezing it in place with a pair of Winter Blasts.

"Aww, c'mon, partner! I didn't tell you to pick me up for no reason! You got a _sword_ in your hand, so _start using it!_"

Twisting his arm around, Jack understood. Instinctively. The way to grip his sword, the way to swing the blade. Loosen the pinkies. Brace legs, but don't tense. Push with left arm, pull with right, swing with the shoulders and waist. Cut with the last foot of the blade, take advantage of the length. Exhale, now **move**. He drew his sword in a left-to-right motion, neatly bisecting the man-like construct with a perfectly executed horizontal slice.

His new blade laughed and laughed and laughed as it tore through earth and stone, steel humming as it bit into stone and earth.

"Yeeehaw! I love this new guy!"

Subtly, Jack saw that that more than just the golem was being cut by the blade; the dirt was actually crumbling before it actually hit its cutting edge; the sword, whatever it was, was drinking deeply from the earthy brown magic that held the golem together, tearing its internal support structure apart as it sliced through its stone.

Interesting.

Jack, having completed that first swing, then immediately made a fast upwards swipe, slashing a line from groin to forehead, again with the same crumbling effect as before. There was a feeling, he realized, that the sword was getting heavier and heavier in his hands. And it was starting to hum, ever so slightly.

The quartered construct fell to the ground, even the stone that had once made it up now disintegrating to dry dust. Jack stepped back as it clawed at him, the stone still obeying whatever magics had programmed it to attack him, even as it crumbled to dust. The blade in his hand sang, literally, as it began to emit a soft glow.

"This little light of mine..."

Turning his attention to the thief, he found her gone, and the other golem standing there, barring his way. Great. Okay, so she was here to steal the artifacts, not engage him. This was a delaying tactic. He wasn't sure if he should have been insulted at his dismissal or relived that she wasn't sending any more golems in his direction. The clatter of valuable baubles being thrown onto a waiting artificial hand drew his attention.

"That's it. This is far beyond what I bargained for. I'm outta here."

Heavy sounds, such as that of a large chest being thrown aboard a waiting stone hand, echoed through the Vault. This was closely followed by the sound of a golem pulling itself free of the Vault.

"Hey, partner, you heard that too, right?" Queried the sword.

Jack tightened his grip on the blade, eliciting a small chuckle from the bastard sword as the man turned to face the golems now barring his way, the cobblestone constructs glowing orange from the light of the fire plasmid in his arm as it ignited.

"Yep."

= _Outside = _

Louise clambered over fallen debris and tumbled sections of wall, and pulled the red wrench from where it had landed. She gripped the cold steel, and held the hunk of metal awkwardly in her hands.

"This is meant to be a weapon?" She groused, hefting the heavy pipe wrench. Louise did not dare let her magic flow through it, lest she blow up her familiar's precious weapon, but instead gripped it tightly as best she could. The pinkette looked up, trying to figure out what was happening with the battle inside of the vault; the larger golem was stationary, its arm elbow-deep in the bowels of the tower, and... Louise strained her ears. Yes. There were sounds of fighting inside. The feel in the air shifted again, the tension in the ground rippling as magic was drawn inwards, like Cattleya's tiger drawing breath before a loud roar.

Five rapid movements caught her attention, just before one of the Vault's walls burst outwards in a spray of cobblestone and shattered shelving. A golem landed in pieces some fifty feet from the base of the tower, where it broke into limbs and pieces, scattering across the lawn.

Idly, the pinkette wondered how many toes would be stubbed by unwary passers bybefore the stones were cleared away after this incident.

Louise's train of thought was jerked back as a square of light appeared on the wall, and was sucked inwards. There was another crash. She whirled around as footsteps approached her, hefting the wrench awkwardly in her hands, ready to... ready to... what? As if answering an unspoken question, Kirche arched and eyebrow, and pushed the unresisting wrench away.

"Valliere? Just what is happening here?"

"Its that thief, Foquet!" The pinkette growled, indicating towards the tower. "That stupid familiar of mine went and picked a fight with the thief and... and..." The girl fell silent, and then pointed accusingly at the readhead. "And what are you doing here!"

A finger pointed at the tower-sized golem. "As you can see, that is anything but subtle. And believe me, I know what subtlety looks like." The Zerbst licked her lips. "Right about now, half the school is up and wondering what is happening at the moment. Duck."

The readhead followed her own advice, ducking her head and crouching down as the slab of stone passed over their heads. However, the pinkette did not. Louise, still standing straight, rubbed the top of her head, patting the disturbed hair back into place with wide eyes. She trembled slightly as she picked stone chips from her scalp.

Kirche allowed a nervous laugh. "Oooh, never mind. You're too short to have to worry about that. Work on your reflexes, though. One hair lower and that would have taken off the top of your head, shorty."

The pinkette's cheeks flushed a bright red. "Just who are you calling sh-"

"Step back, shorty."

"Will you stop calling me sh-"

Zerbst jumped away from Louise, letting a stone the size of her head pass between them. However, this time the youngest Valliere did jump back. The pinkette murmured something indecipherable, and then turned her head to the source of the hypervelocity stone; the new holes in the tower.

Kirche cocked her head to one side, then pointed off to the nearby gatehouse.

"Lets head that way, shall we?"

Both girls nodded, and in the first cooperation between Valliere and Zerbst in almost seventy four years, took up a brisk walk away from the fight that sent large chunks of stone flying off in various directions, often at sufficient velocities to punch a hole in three-foot stone walls. More students were starting to gather, albeit from a (great) distance. Whispers of a rematch were quickly put down as Guiche arrived.

Eyes wide, the blond boy goggled at the destruction wrought upon the academy grounds.

"Just what is happening here?" He bellowed dramatically, brandishing the rose wand. "A shame upon any Earth mage! To use our noble craft for such ignoble purposes!" With his hand sweeping up to cup his oh so precious head, the blond fop shook his head from side to side, before raising his earthen golems with a flick of a rose petal.

Louise, with Kirche in tow, hurried past him, ignoring the presence of the two steel-and-earth Valkyries that now stood on either side of the General's youngest son. "Its Foquet, you brick-for-brains! Just look at that golem! Now get away before you get hurt! Everybody, move away from the tower! Go away already, before you get hurt by the debris! NOW!"

Students recoiled at the sudden concern shown by the scion of Valliere, and retreated back a pace. Their thoughts, however, were interrupted as the golem groaned as it wrenched itself free from the Artifact Vault. It seemed... well, almost frantic in its detachment from the tower. Three figures were standing atop its headless torso; Foquet and two of her golems, now bearing large, flat shields the size of a door. The two shield golems locked their two plates together as a lance of flame shot out from inside, striking the leftmost golem. It penetrated, spearing one, then a flick of a wrist bisected the golem.

Jack launched himself out of the hole, a sword now in his hand, and landed heavily on the golem's shoulder.

= ii

Was this for real? He bounced from craggy joint to craggy joint, his body moving fluidly, springing away from blows and returning them with unnatural proficiency. Jack didn't know how to use a sword. He used clubs, almost exclusively. And yet the splicer was wielding the sword with the ease of a lifetime's worth of training. Something was off. He should not be able to do this...

"You gotta attack its weak point, partner!" The sword clacked, interrupting his thoughts. "Only real way to bring it down is through massive damage! Golems this big always have a magic-saturated catalytic core to help run the whole thing! Its like the heart, or a lung, actually. Maybe a kidney? Dunno about squishy bits, you people have such complicated names for them. But anyway: you take out the core, and you can bring down the entire golem! Maybe. I don't know for sure, actually."

"Really." Jack eyed the sword quizzically.

"If it has one. Usually a sphere of some kind. Mostly stones with runes on them, squiggly little things like the one on the back of your hand. Some of the time. I think. Saw a few that had just a smiley face and a name on them. One of them just had a rude word on it! But anyway, find the core, partner! You might need to do some searching, though, since sometimes there are more than one core," It rambled on unhelpfully. "sometimes there aren't even any! Most fun of all, some of them blow up! But one thing's for sure; the best thing is to go for the core, partner! "

Huh.

Jack gripped the golem's skin tightly as he hauled himself upright, then staggered across to its shoulder. Foquet launched a rock at him, then brought up a thick stone wall made of the golem's torso as Jack retaliated with a blast of winter ice. Damn, too little EVE for anything fancy. Just blasts from now on.

"Core. Where?" He asked the blade.

"I dunno. Find it yourself! I can stab it, though, once you do find it."

"..."

"Hey, I don't really have eyes, partner, so you're on your own, two-eyes."

Jack slapped the golem with the blade, the sword making a loud clang as it bounced off the solid stone.

"Ow! Hey! I dent easily, partner... I don't think that's quite helping with the whole 'killing the golem' idea we're on."

"Better one?"

"I dunno... start slicing larger chunks off of it?"

"... sure."

Jack raised the sword with one hand, holding the ancient blade above his head, point at his cheek and angling downwards towards the stone skin and earthen flesh underneath. The blade hummed in his hands as Jack searched for a kink. Pushing hard, the sword sunk into the stone cracks.

The golem shuddered as a muffled sword spoke. "Yep, think that works better."

"Core?"

"Uh... I can sense it. Kinda. Off to your left, partner. Feeling real tingly over that way."

Casually, the splicer began to poke the golem's neck, punching small, fist-sized holes into its stone skin using stab-twist combinations. This went on for a little while.

"... y'know, I think we should be doing more productive things, partner."

Jack held up the sword, ignoring the lurching golem as he steadied himself. The splicer was about to plunge the sword deep into the golem when another hunk of rock shot past his head. The third one would have hit him in the face had he not simply punched it out of the air with the pommel of the blade.

"'ey! That hurt, dammit!"

"Blocked it."

"I know, but that still hurt!"

"Steel hurts?"

"No, but brass does! And that's what my pommel is made out of! To think that my partner was so cruel and inconsiderate to me! Oh woe is me!"

"..."

Foquet stared, arms limply by her sides, as the silent man and the talktative sword rambled along to each other.

"You... I've heard about you." She squeaked, pointing a finger at the blade. "Should have realised it sooner. Talking blade, absorbs magic like crazy... you're Derflinger, aren't you? The Left-Hand's sword. Mage-killer, army breaker. You're... oh Founder... you're priceless..."

"Hah. Good girl. Right on all counts, except for the bit about me being a sword."

"Hu-"

Jack's sweep almost took off her head. Instead, the tip of the sword tore through the front of the thief's hood. She staggered, the cowl almost slipping from her head, but a quick pull down masked her face in the shadows. Huffing as adrenaline shook her, Foquet stumbled back, raising her iron wand in a self-defensive gesture. "That was a cheap trick from a supposedly noble sword."

"Heh. Almost got ya. And you're fast! So fast! You too, partner, seeing that chance, but still the girl was faster!" "Y'know what, I kinda like you, except for the whole trying to kill my new partner thing."

Jack leaped forward again, sword thrusting forward, plunging through the thief's coat.

A golem clapped its hand on Jack's shoulder, while a second wrapped its arms around his sword arm.

"Get. Off. My. Golem."

The two golems leaped.

"Dangerous." Tabitha commented, stepping into the shadow of a pillar as stones rained down from above. There was a rippling explosion in the background, and Guiche squared off against the pinkette. She glanced nervously at the golem, then suddenly began to backpedal.

"Uh... move!"

"What do you mean, Valliere?"

A second series of explosions, this time without warning, shattered windows or simply made new ones. Stone rained down from above, seeding fist-sized chunks of masonry into the lawn around the stunned Gramont. The dismembered head of a golem bounced off the pavement a few feet away.

"That."

Jack of Rapture landed much closer to the lawn, grappling with a golem that had hurled the two of them off of the colossus. Instead of breaking, however, his tonic-reinforced legs were gouging the turf as the golem landed just after him, grinding its stone club – its partner's arm, in fact - against the flat of the splicer's newfound sword even as its other hand fought to pin the splicer down.

The man braced, heaved, and hurled the golem to the ground before leaping after it to almost-straddle the construct. He drew back his blade, and plunged it into the golem's chest. The sword hummed again, this time gaining more mass, as it sucked the magic out of the construct.

"That felt good." Murmured the blade. "Been a long time since I had last done this magic-sucking thing. Swear I could have forgotten about it if I wasn't treated right."

Two more golems pounded into the ground where Jack had been standing, had he not suddenly sprang back. They raised giant stone swords, each easily as long as they were, and stepped forward, barring his way. Louise stepped forward, raising her wand.

"Fireball!"

A sudden pressure sucked at his ears, and the lead golem vaporized as a fire-less explosion ripped through it, tearing off its arm and sending it sprawling to the ground. Jack followed through with a stomp, crushing its chest as his sword whipped around to behead it.

"Not so much of a Zero now, am I, Zerbst?" Louise coldly declared, her wand visibly shaking as she shifted her aim to the next one.

"Oh pooh, Louise, you will always be a Zero. One way or another. Like, you know, your accuracy."

"I hit it!"

"Barely; you clipped its shoulder."

"I still took it down!"

"Your familiar did."

Guiche drew up short, gawking as Jack straightened, the talking sword in his head yammering on about his surroundings, how new they were, and how long it had been since he had gotten outside.

The blonde fop pointed at the sword.

"Talking sword?"

Wrenching itself around in Jack's grip, the sword pointed itself at the da Gramont scion. "Yep, kiddo. Talking sword."

"B-b-but..."

"Heh. Always with the doubt. Yes, this is a talking sword. Get over it, boy."

"T-t... talking sword."

"Yes yes, I talk we get it, big shock boo hoo."

Jack, instead of paying any attention to the sword and the earth mage gawking at it, was turning his focus towards the larger construct – dubbed 'the colossus' in his mind - and the three figures atop it. The colossus itself had emptied out its chest, creating its own, miniature vault full of treasures, it arms scooping up caskets like spilled marbles and placing it into its chest. Two smaller golems, one Foquet. The man-sized constructs were loaded up with a pair of caskets/chests each, while Foquet was already chanting to make new golems with her iron wand. The colossus began to turn, shambling away from the splicer. Jack charged.

"That man was just ejected from that golem, and now he's running back at it? Impressive." Kirche murmured in awe as the golem drew back, almost in fright, while the Familiar of Zero leaped up to try and catch up with the massive construct. It tried to bat him out of the air, torso twisting to shield its maker, and was stabbed in the shoulder for its troubles.

But the thief herself was not about to sit about being helpless; she waved her wand to and fro, summoning more golems from the earth, having them scamper up the colossus to try and pull the intruder down. Stones began to leap up from where they had landed, soaring up into the air and then raining down onto the golem, adding to the mass as Jack shifted around with the sword in his hands, trying to avoid the stones as they climbed aboard the colossal golem.

"Founder damn you! You're like some disease, some pest! Go away already!"

Suddenly, the arm detached itself, jettisoning the splicer as well as a good two tons of rock and earth. Jack scrambled top the 'top' of the falling limb, even as it disintegrated around him, and then leaped off at the last moment, tumbling to the ground. Minimal injury, at least. He stood, the implacable man drawing back the sword and charging forward yet again.

"Just what does it take to get rid of you, Jack of Rapture!" Screamed Foquet. Weaving through her golems, Jack sliced through them in a blur of steel, cutting through the resistance as his target tried to flee. More barred his way, and a blast of incinerating flames burned them to the ground. Foquet watched as the burning arm simply slagged her golems with gouts of flame. This needed to end, fast.

"I was hoping that I wouldn't need this..."

A small bar of metal was produced from within her robes, and cast at the advancing splicer. The iron wand flicked, shredding the bar with an unseen force, silver ribbons scattering into the air around the splicer. Jack

"Don't!"

Foquet smiled as she directed the harmless chunks of light metal, wrapping them around the flames surrounding the splicer's arms. As they did, the strips disintegrated into tiny chunks. The powdered magnesium ignited, the cloud of particulate metal burning all around the splicer.

A bright light enveloped the courtyard.

Louise lowered her arm, her vision swimming with bright dots, outlines of the scene before her still flash-burned into her sight. She rubbed her eyes, and tried to seek out her familiar. Students were scrambling away, some still half-blind by the flare as the pinkette mageling picked her way through half-seen figures. The courtyard around her was a scene of devastation typical of a high-level mage-battle; once magically reinforced stone now lay shattered as the Artifact Vault smoked, its gutted contents twinkling in the light of the magic lamps being lit all around them.

"Jack! JACK! Where are you!" The girl shouted, screamed. Rubble shifted, tripped her at times. She stumbled, but didn't fall. Around her, the cries grew louder.

"Founder... what was that!"

"Hey! That big golem's getting away!"

Pushing past the last of the students, Louise reached Jack. He was on his knees and hands, eyes squeezed firmly shut as if in pain. The sword lay at his side, muttering on and on about how bright and painful that must have been for the splicer. He was also trying to direct the man towards picking him up, mainly because the grass was tickling him. Louise picked up the sword, causing it to begin praising her, but then yelp as she drove it into the soggy earth.

"Oi. That's... uhm... that's rude!"

"Shut up." Louise growled, and knelt down beside her familiar. "Oh you stupid, stupid..."

"Louise?"

"Stupid familiar... you're going to have to call me master now. As punishment!" The pinkette sniffed, easing the man back into a seated position. "You go running off like that, fighting that mage! Foquet's on another level altogether from Guiche, you stupid, stupid familiar!"

"Urgh. Would have won."

"Oh?"

"Bright light..."

"M-magnesium powder. Pure magnesium, like that... " Murmured Guiche. "She must have transmuted it earlier; that's a triangle class spell at least. Broke it up into a powder... then, when your familiar's flames ignited it... well, you saw what happened."

Jack turned towards the source of the voice, and frowned.

"Guiche?"

Louise blinked. "Wait..."

She waved her hand in front of the familiar's distant eyes. Tried to draw his attention silently... but nothing.

Blind. He was blind?

"Jack... can you see me?"

= **Sinclair Solutions Lab #3**=

"Are you ready, Mister Jenkins?"

"R-ready... you sure this is gonna work, Michaels?"

Bang.

"Lets find out. Okay, Jenkins is dead! Turn on the chamber before he cools off already!"

The splicer's head hit the floor, dead from the single gunshot to the back of his head, delivered by a revolver. His body shimmered for a second as the Vita-Chamber hummed to life. The splicer disappeared, and was then unceremoniously spat out of the glass tube of sparkling blue energies, this time unharmed. He stumbled, tripped, then fell down the steel stairs. Following behind the sound of crashing man and breaking bones, and then the snap of a neck, the brass-framed Vita Chamber pulsed again, this time delivering one splicer sans broken neck into the waiting arms of a pair of scientists.

"I'd say yes, Jenkins. Vita-Chamber works just fine."

"Fuck. You."

Robert tapped the control console, keying the lab speakers. "Okay. That's our baseline. Functions as normal when subject is dead."

The recently dead splicer was lowered into a seat, and given something to drink.

"Phase two, subject living... you finished with your drink there, Jenkins?"

A nod.

"Okay, testing..."

A switch was thrown. The Vita-Chamber hummed, pulsed... and nothing happened.

"Try it again, Rob!"

Again, the switch was thrown. The Vita-Chamber sparked, flared... and again, nothing.

"So it ain't working?" Murmured Sinclair. He stood on the observation deck, a glass of water in one hand as he observed the experiments. Sipping thoughtfully, he swept his gaze over the banks of electronics. "What's wrong?"

"Okay, going with plan b."

Bang.

"So it works?"

"You motherf-"

"Yeah, looks like it works only when he's dead. Just as programmed."

"Quantum filters check out, boss. Thing is, this means that we have some good news: wherever he is, Jack Ryan ain't dead."

"So he's still alive?"

"Since, like I said, he ain't dead, I'll just say yessir. We've gene-locked this Vita-Chamber to Leeroy there, and we're gonna test if we can send something through to him, rather than try to bring him to us when he's dead." The man cupped his hands over his mouth, shouting out to some technicians above. "Hey, Baines! Are we ready for the third test!"

"I'd say so!"

"Good enough!" Turning back to Sinclair, the scientist stepped over to a control console. "Better not touch anything, sir, we're going to start it off now."

"And what are we doing?"

"Sending something to him."

"Right, mate, we've crossed the photonic streams, and the flux capacitor's gone and packed up again... dammit, switch over to the second one! So, sweetie, lets get to the music..."

The lights dimmed.

"Don't worry about that, just re-routing the power..."

Something in the main room shattered, sending a shower of orange sparks across the lab floor.

"Just some arcing, nothing to fret about..."

Motes of light started appearing all around the Vita-Chamber, some twisting around in complex patterns.

"I say, that looks rather pretty..."

The blue light of the Vita-Chamber shifted to a deeper red.

"Red-shifting... looks about right. Pearson, throw it."

"Throwing it..."

The audio diary was hurled at the glass contraption, quickly swallowed up by the red light and disappearing into the ether.

"..."

"..."

"..."

"Well?"

= Tristain Academy, Outside of the Headmater's Office =

The school's surgeon sighed as he eased the blinded splicer into the seat.

"Can you see any better now, Mister Jack?"

Jack blinked a few more times. "Yes."

"Good. I suppose its just a case of flash-blindness, then. I feared that it would be something more severe, but it seems that you'll do just fine if you rest and recuperate." The man – Jonathan - said. "Take care of yourself, Mister Jack. I shall see to finding some reagents for your other wounds... you have cracked ribs, at least one burn on your body and a score of smaller wounds that I swear were there a few minutes ago... well, I'll have my work cut out for me. I'll see you in a moment."

Jack turned to a distant figure.

"The thief?"

Colbert made a small 'ah' sound as he was spotted. "We're hunting her down as we speak; the local township has been informed and are sending some watchmen and the rangers out to comb the forests near the Academy... but... there is another issue that is more... immediate."

Interested, Jack leaned closer. "Yes?" He queried.

Crossing his arms, the professor sighed in resignation. "I must mention that I have to re-catalogue the Artifact Vault and see what is missing. And, as you know, you took that sword from the Vault. I'm afraid that you'll have to let me take back Derflinger. He's a valuable part of the collection in the Artifact Vault, so... I do hope you understand, Mister Jack."

Frowning, Jack nodded. He understood.

"Derf?"

"I can tell what you're thinking, partner. And its a no. I don't want to go back in there."

"But..." Colbert began, but Jack shook his head. "See reason, Jack of Rapture! You've taken something from the Artifact Vault. You should be returning it!"

Jack's frown got bumped up into a scowl. He didn't like the idea of... imprisoning Deflinger. Again. But... the blade did belong in Colbert's care. There had to be_something_that he could do... The sword pulled itself a half-inch out of the scabbard, and began to speak.

"Y'know what, baldy? I just figured... uh, _remembered_something! Now that I got myself a swordsman, we can finalize that... pact... covenant... what was that word? Contract! That contract got sealed up with me! Y-yeah... sounds about right."

Colbert blinked. "Uh... contract?"

"Something that my last user had. If I choose someone to bear me, then the Academy is to release me from the Vault to their care. From then on, I'm theirs. More or less."

"Well... I... certainly wasn't expecting that... and where is this contract?"

"Its probably in my sword-case, but I doubt it'll still be around with all the fire magic that they were throwing around inside there. Y'know that, right?"

A gleam entered the old man's eyes. "Ah, so unfortunate." He smiled. "I'll just have to take the word of a legendary blade, then. Seeing as you've got a reputation and history, I doubt few people will try to call you out on it. Jack of Rapture, do you hereby accept the Founder's Blade, Derflinger?"

"We ain't getting married, baldy."

"Just say yes. Please? Formality's sake."

Jack cocked his head to one side. He didn't like this 'formality' thing. "... yes?"

"Good. Take care of him... it... Derflinger, I mean."

"It sounds good to me!"

"It is a valuable treasure to our country, Jack of Rapture. Please, treat it well. I'll have to ask you to sign a sheet later, for formality's sake, and will have to ask you that you leave him in Miss Valliere's room while you are here at the Academy, as we do not allow the public carrying of weapons on campus."

"... sure."

"Excellent. I suppose you three should be going now. I'm fairly certain that Old Man Osmond would be holding a meeting to discuss what course of action we shall take with the issue of Foquet. Now run along now, I've got a... ugh... a lot of cataloguing to do..."

Jack gave the man a sympathetic nod, and followed Louise.

= **Lab #3 **=

Smack.

Tumble, tumble, fall._ Snap._

The vita-chamber crackled to life.

Jenkins stepped out of it, furious.

Robert walked over to it, curious.

"Looks like the test item." He said.

The audio diary began to play.

He smiled. "... ah. It works."

"So there's a time delay?"


	13. Zero's Recovery Ward

_**Oookay, guys, its been a while but here's the next chapter of Zero Shock. With work, study and everything else in between I've drastically slowed down my writing output, and put ToyHammer on hiatus until I get the inspiration to churn out a new version, or continue the story. Either way, don't expect anything much from me. If you want to follow Zero's Shock, there's a more complete – if fractured - version of it on SpaceBattles.**_

Kirche smiled as Tabitha trailed behind her. The pair stepped into the main atrium of the tower, the taller of the two making note of the giant streak of molten stone that smouldered still. As they got closer, it was visible that it wasn't a deep gouge; barely deep enough to fit her palm into, but the grass around it was scorched dry, the steam condensing into a thin layer of water on the footpath and over the wall.

Such power... her hands shook. _That man had been able to focus a fire spell that had cut through stone. _

And was, if his later actions were to be believed, not that visibly tired from the experience.

Kirche let her head tilt in wonderment as she surveyed the damage; shattered segments of magically reinforced wall were scattered around, some as large as herself and buried halfway into the ground. Just how much magic had been thrown around by Jack of Rapture to create so much havoc? It would have certainly drained a lot of willpower; such reserves was a definite measure of a mage's endurance. The more willpower one had, the more they could cast.

It was plain that that man had incredible reserves of it.

"Amazing." The redhead purred as she ran her hand along the smooth gouge. It wasn't the first time she had seen something like this. Her family, after all, had a long history of producing many fine fire mages. She herself, with effort, could replicate such a spell, but that was it; the effort.

Anyone below a triangle mage would have been exhausted from the sheer control needed for projecting the flames into such small a diameter, let alone the heat of that intensity. It took little magic to create a hot flame; even dot-class mages were capable of melting stone with their fires. However, the splicer had not spared the use of such a powerful spell a second thought, and all to cut a golem in half. He had not even used a chant or spell, formed words or made the flowing gestures that would focus his willpower into the fire. He had simply thrust his arm forward, silent as the stone he would vaporize, and burned earth and stone into ashes.

Kirche tapped her chin thoughtfully. He must have incredible reserves indeed.

Tabitha stepped up, her thin hands reaching up for the handle of the door.

"Hurry." She warned.

"Right, lets go on, then. Do you have your spells ready?"

A nod.

"Lets see what we can find out about that delicious man..."

A blink.

"You know... Jack?"

Tabitha cocked her head to one side to see that the dragon behind her had its jaw dropped open, revealing sharklike teeth in the hundreds, though this was somewhat subdued by the bright, almost childish green eyes and excited chuffing noises that it made; almost like a kitten being mesmerized by a string ball.

The bluette swiftly gave the dragon a sharp stare.

"No eating."

**= Headmaster's Office =**

"Jack of Rapture." Osmond sighed. "Didn't I ask you to stay out of trouble? And, for that matter, to stop hurting our students and damaging our buildings? And didn't I ask you of that... sometime around yesterday afternoon?" Another sigh. "That quickly, really?"

"... sorry?" Jack ventured.

"Nice try." The headmaster chuckled. "You get half a mark for not hurting students, at least. That's something we can be thankful for. But, the fact remains that the Artifact Vault has been gutted, and a courtyard has – for the second time, I might add – been extensively damaged from that duel with the thief."

Osmond's smile soured slightly as he ran over the details of Jack and Foquet's rampage. Brief as it had been, the destruction to the locale had been extensive. "I suppose now we know why we fight wars away from the streets of our cities."

Jack frowned, not understanding. He had known nothing but combat on streets and in cities.

"Colbert and the rest of the research faculty have been sorting through all the debris, trying to recover as many artifacts as they could; with all the damage done, we don't know if any of those artifacts were stolen or simply scattered, and its going to take a while trying to account for all the items that were in the Vault... thankfully, Miss Longueville has recently been cataloguing its contents and we at least have a partial inventory to work through."

"I'm incredibly sorry for my familiar's actions, headmaster!" Louise spoke up, refusing to be ignored anymore. Despite his prominence, Jack was still her familiar! He was her responsibility, just as she was his master. That meant that she had to step up for this and take the blame... then, a small part of her mind grumbled, she'd take it out on him.

The pinkette executed a low bow as she made her apology. The headmaster quirked an eyebrow at her, curious. She took that as a cue to go on.

"We were surprised by Foquet, and... and..." And just what happened after that? Louise shrunk back, and sighed. _Admit it, Zero. You were nothing but a damsel in distress._ "And then my familiar tried to protect me."

"And why is that?" Asked the old mage.

"I... I accosted the thief." Louise explained. "My familiar... helped me."

"Obviously, he succeeded in that." Osmond chuckled, bowing slightly to the splicer. "Knowing that, I do believe that even though you did get into a dangerous situation in a very silly manner, this was for the right reasons; as for your familiar, protecting his master issomething which I cannot blame him for; Foquet of the Crumbling Dirt would have no doubt made off with many more of the priceless artifacts had she..."

He paused, and them smiled.

"... had you not destroyed them first." The headmaster finished.

The pinkette whipped around fast enough to slap the splicer with her long hair, and Jack briefly sputtered as he sighed. "Ah... wait... what!"

"You destroyed several priceless artifacts." Intoned the greying mage. The shocked girl's surprise was being slowly converted into distilled rage. "Very expensive artifacts..." He repeated, grinning at Jack all the while.

The splicer narrowed his eyes, though his stance showed more resigned acceptance than defiance.

"The thief started it." Jack retorted, raising his hand. Longueville flinched as the splicer's hand passed over her to point out the window, where Foquet had disappeared into the surrounding forests. It was hard to miss, the giant swathe of felled trees and giant footprints, which suddenly stopped as the golem had passed out of sight and the thief had released her hold on them, letting the golem crumble back into their base materials.

"That doesn't matter, you... you..." Finding a word to reprimand her familiar with that would not end with her getting reprimanded herself was... difficult.

"Careless?" Suggested the headmaster. Louise nodded eagerly. Yeah, that worked.

"... careless familiar!" Roared the tiny pinkette. "You can't just go destroying whatever you want! I mean, that thing with Guiche was bad enough already, with you running off and almost killing the stupid fop! How do you explain that!"

"Plasmids." Jack replied, holding up his left arm. Louise – as well as the assembled staff - flinched back, remembering how those bees had simply crawled out from underneath the man's skin. That was seriously disturbing, to say the least.

"Well, Jack of Rapture," The old man interrupted. "I must admit that I had been curious as to what exactly those artifacts would do, I am disappointed at the destruction of the Azure Orb. And everything else. Such as the wall. It had been enchanted by a gathering of nearly two dozen mages, according to our lore, and had stood there for almost three centuries. Then, in two days' time from your arrival, you have destroyed half of it."

"Ah..." The splicer didn't know why, but suddenly the urge to apologize was there. He felt... small. That headmaster's gaze was now weighted by years, he realized, and not only his authority. A very subtle, but significant change from the more feeble looking man that he had first encountered. Jack bowed his head slightly, and sighed.

"And, there is the matter of – of the ward-spells are correct – you _throwing_ the Azure Orb at the Thief."

"It was a weapon." The splicer countered.

"Aye, partner, and a weapon is made to be used." Chuckled the sword on Jack's back. Osmond raised a curious eyebrow at this, and the blade slipped an inch of its steel free of the leather scabbard that held it. "And given the bang that we got out of it, I'd say that your 'Azure Orb' was quite the weapon."

"And what about the wall, Jack of Rapture? How do you explain that? Was that a weapon too?"

"Thief did it." Jack retorted.

"Fortunately." Sighed the Headmaster. "I can put the blame for the damages to the vault on that thief, Foquet." Osmond's voice grew colder, taking on a warning tone. "But – off the record – I'm warning you that I can't... well, more accurately that I _won't _make excuses for you if you cause another incident such as this one."

Jack's nod showed his understanding of the warning. "Sure."

"Familiar! You will address the headmaster as is proper! Don't just go dismissing him like that!" Roared the pinkette. "You disrespectful, careless..." Rage overtaking caution, she seized his shirt, dragging the man lower t- wait, did he just flinch? A grimace of pain had crossed his features, and Louise felt more than saw the full body twitch that lifted his heels a hair's breadth off the floor.

"... wait..."

The pinkette sprang back from her familiar, her hands turning over as she inspected the fair skin over her knuckles, now dabbed with a pattern of blood across her fingers. Her familiar's blood. "Wait... you're hurt?"

Jack shrugged at the sprinkling of blood that had seeped through his shirt, inspecting the unseen wound underneath, and nodded. "Yeah."

The pinkette stepped closer to her familiar. "... you don't act hurt."

"Yes."

"I... I think we'll have to go now, headmaster." She whispered quietly, as if only to herself.

"Ah... I- I too, headmaster." Stammered the secretary. She seemed nervous, but plunged on ahead. "I'll see to it that Miss Valliere and her familiar get to the hospital wing."

"Agreed. Miss Longueville, please ensure that the two arrive safely."

**= Sinclair Solutions Lab 4 'Green Room' =**

A can of soup clanged off the Big Daddy armor, which housed the rather battered Leeroy inside. Where he had managed to procure the armor, nobody knew, but what they did know was that he was refusing to get out when being tested. Or, after a few more incidents, ever come out at all.

Behind almost half a foot of hand-crafted glass, Sal sipped a cup of coffee, lukewarm now, and then popped a sugar cube into his mouth, chewing on it. He was half-slouched into his chair, a functional but comfortable wooden curly thing that creaked as he shifted his weight on it. He set down the mug on the nearby table, and watched Sinclair carefully as the portly older man stepped into the room and sat down.

The steward – the King of Rapture's right hand man, so to speak – spoke first, breaking the ice off a nearby pipe and flicking it carefully off into a hole in the nearby wall. "So, we can send stuff to him." He observed, nodding towards a pile of research notes, as well as the wall of glued-on paper scraps that now outlined the designs for a new 'anti-Vita-Chamber'.

"There's a time delay, though." Sinclair explained. "For example, we sent that can of soup an hour ago. And not just a delay. We have a few things that arrived _before_ they were sent."

The scientist held up an audio diary from a nearby pile marked 'CAREFUL!', and hit the play button on the stamped metal keys.

"January the ninth, ninety sixty one... eighteen past eleven pm. This is test number eight, we're sending through an audio diary. If you find this, please return to Sinclair So-" Salvatore gawked as Sinclair tapped the stop button and sat there smugly. Both heads turned to the large clock set into one wall. Just below the bloodied crossbow bolt.

"That's... five hours from now." He observed dryly, pulling out a pocket watch to check again. "Well I'll be damned."

"... that's kinda scary, isn't it?" Grinned Sinclair. "That we can send things back in time, rather than have it delayed and re-appear later on in time."

The steward's eyes widened as he digested the implications of such an ability. "Imagine what we could do if we could send someone back." Sal murmured. "Stop Ryan, stop Fontaine... heck, we might even be able to stop Rapture from happening at all."

"Ah, but what are the implications of that?" Sinclair chided. "If we went back in time and made it so that they didn't exist, neither would Jack. And if Jack didn't exist, we wouldn't be where we are today. I'm no scientist, but I do know a little about 'cause and effect' here. Its a damned nuisance, this time travelling thing. We're working to get rid of it. Tweaking it around so that we can be more bang on. Or at least stop sending things into the past. That's a huge problem for us now."

"No. Sinclair, you were hired to bring back Jack Ryan, not send people back in time so that you can go slap Andy Ryan silly, or piss in his tea, or make a quick buck from the whale races or clever investments. That can be a project for another time but _until then_, until then... we focus on bringing back Jack Ryan."

A shrug. Sal tapped his chin thoughtfully, adding another sugar cube – the fifth – into the coffee in an attempt to get some flavor out of the bland mixture. "We are sinking so much time and effort into finding him again. No distractions. What else have you sent?"

"So far, we've gotten something from a day ahead. This is really helping with our schedule, since we know what to send and when. For example, I do know that we're sending that audio diary through in a few hours' time."

"Then... are we going to try sending something to Jack?"

"We most certainly will. A care package, wherever he may be. I do believe that we've found him, and now its only a matter of time before we can reach him. As soon as we've sorted a power supply and finished modifying the Vita-Chamber, we can send something through."

"Good. Make sure these are in whatever package you send." Sal murmured, pulling a small package from the folds of his coat. A bundle of letters, bound in ribbon. Crayon drawings and scraps of paper peeked out from inside. Sinclair picked them up thoughtfully, and placed them carefully inside a small case, already full with an audio diary and several tapes.

"We're not telling everyone that we're sending things out to Jack, just yet. Don't want to get their hopes up in case this attempt fails." He murmured. "We're gonna send a few audio diaries through, see if we can get them t-"

There was a brief clang as an audio diary dropped down from above, hitting the annoyed Leeroy on the head.

"to land less violently. Would be a pity if we sent through something that killed him." He murmured. "I do believe that test was done with a running audio diary, see if it actually experiences any time... in between its destination and the vita chamber. Want to come with? Lets see the results."

Both stood, and made their way through to the next room. The setup was different this time, with a half assembled Vita-Chamber sitting in the middle, with a raised platform on one end of the room. It had an attached slide, which was used to launch items into the glowing sphere of cyan energies.

There was also a rack of weapons nearby, on a wall beside the entranceway. Shotguns (00 buck) and pistols (marked with armor piercing rounds), mostly, with a few of the newly recovered Pilum rocket launchers.

"I notice that you have a large number of weapons in the room."

"We figured that since we're sending things through to wherever Jack is," Sinclair began, "that it can work both ways, and someone on the other side might be able to send stuff back. And if its something nasty, well... we'll be able to handle it rather than... ah, what was it that O'Neill said? 'Get caught with our pants down'?"

At the mention of the subordinate he had sent to safeguard this place, Sal grinned. "Yeah, sounds like something he'd say."

Continuing his inspection Salvatore spotted Leeroy set up on the other end of the room. He waved, weakly, and the steward nodded his head in response. An apple – part of the planned tests for biological materials being sent through – smattered itself on his head. Sal smiled sympathetically as Leeroy scraped the juices off his faceplate.

"This sucks." He muttered.

"You're getting a lot of money for it, though. Cheer up, you got a nice fat pile of cash waiting for you when we're done." Sinclair grinned, trying to be reassuring.

"Screw money, I had dignity. Give me that back and..." A second apple hit him. "Ah, goddammit. I give up."

Sal sighed sympathetically. "... stay strong, Leeroy."

**= Tristain Academy Hospital Wing =**

As the three of them moved down the stone hallways of the Academy, Louise glanced at her familiar, who was keeping pace with her, as opposed to a more gentle pace of a man with tender ribs. Was he truly injured? Or playing it up for the headmaster? No, the pinkette concluded; he couldn't have. Too much being thrown around by golems for him to be entirely faking it, and she had not seen anything that suggested that he might be so much tougher than the average man that he would be able to simply take those hits and keep going unbruised.

Upon closer inspection, she saw how he seemed less animated, more cautious. His arms weren't resting at his sides, but rather were kept an inch or two away from his hips; to keep him from scraping the bruises underneath.

The pinkette shuddered at the sudden memory, as if someone had simply dropped a chunk of ice into her stomach. Those first, disastrous days. A new wand, shattered. Glass turned to a hundred knives the size of her fingernails. Wood splintering into javelins. Debris that clawed out at her, as if punishing her for her failures as a mage. Louise bit back the sudden tears as she remembered those long, lonely days in her bedroom.

"Stupid familiar." She muttered to her self, at a quietness that only she could hear. "Making me remember..."

They rounded a corner, Louise falling behind slightly as the secretary rushed ahead.

"Hospital wing." Longueville (mock?)-declared as she opened the doors to the wards, quickly ushering the battered splicer into the treatment room. Jack unslung the scabbarded sword and his wrench, setting them down on a nearby bench as he stepped into the healers' domain. There were always a pair of water mages operating the clinic, and one of them now gestured for Jack to sit on the table; it was a low bed, heavily stuffed so that the splicer didn't sit so much as sunk into the cool sheets that were offered to him. He brushed his fingers against the sheets; waterpoof, he realized. The green haired secretary stepped back, drawing the curtain closed as she sealed the healer, splicer and master inside of their cubicle with her. Sitting on a borrowed stool, the secretary seemed to fade into the background as the water mage instructed her familiar to show him his wounds.

Louise couldn't help but blush slightly as the man – her familiar, she reminded herself – stripped off his clothes from the waist up. His clothing had been bulky and thick, hiding much of his physique. However, Tristanian fashions tended to leave clues about one's build. Unlike the more rotund and filling nobles, or the thin-armed, sickly-faced commoners, her familiar was well muscled, certainly built like those old and weathered statues of mythical figures. The Founder's Sword, the Hero Ivaldi... she could easily imagine him as one of those transmuted stone figures, standing tall and proud and... Louise snapped herself free of her daze as the crackling of newly formed ice was accompanied by the yelp of the mage trying to treat her familiar. A very cautious looking Jack was gripping what could only be a knife made of ice, snapped off from the newly formed icicle that lead from a jug of medicinal water that the healer had... oh.

"Jack! No! Bad familiar!" Louise shouted, jumping up as the ice knife angled itself away from the healer. Jack backed away, clearly surprised at his own sudden violence. Meanwhile, Longueville had all but fallen off her chair, stumbling back into the healer's desk as her wand centred itself on the splicer's chest. Jack blinked at the wand, which was quickly removed as the secretary flushed red.

"O-oh my..." She quavered, stepping away from the splicer's gaze. "Ice... you aren't just a fire mage? Just how many elements can you stack? What are you?"

"Surprised." The splicer grunted as he released the ice-knife, handing it back to the equally surprised healer.

Testing it, the healer drew the knife across a scrap of parchment. The piece bisected neatly at first, but the melting blade soon simply slid across the parchment.

"Oh. That's fortunate." He muttered to himself.

"Stabbing, not slashing." Jack informed him, miming an action that would send the slender blade slipping between ribs and into internal organs. The healer paled, but nodded anyway as he dumped the blade into a jar of water with a little splash.

"Jack, no teaching the healer how to stab people" Grumbled the Valliere scion as she returned to her seat, allowing the rather nervous healer to step forward and begin his work. "... did I really just say that?"

"... sorry?"

A sigh, more growl, escaped the pinkette's lips. This familiar... this familiar was really irritating her now. Dozens of punishments ran through the girl's head, even as another (much more vocal) part reminded her shouted that it would be a trivial thing for him to all but snap her frail frame in two, given that he did the same to a golem.

It took about a minute of prodding and poking (something that caused the passive Jack great discomfort at what seemed to be the healer's growing amusement), it was apparent that his injuries... weren't actually that bad. Moving away from the agitated splicer, the doctor began to file through hastily scribbled notes that he had been scratching out as he inspected the man's wounds.

"... you know, Miss Valliere here had me worried." Fussed the water mage. "She was going on like you were a dying man, Jack of Rapture. You've got a lot of bruising, that is certain, and I can heal most of these injuries easily; stitch the bone together, clean up the bruises and seal the scrapes, but its going to take a while; see how tender it is?"

Jack flinched again as a formerly cracked but now healed up to 'bruised' rib was given a gentle yet still painful jab. He nodded sharply, to indicate his understanding, being unable to move his arms or shoulders thanks to the layer of cool water now folded around his torso. The healer continued to work his magic, which felt like an ice-cold hand sweeping over his chest.

"It will be an hour or so." The healer concluded. "So take a seat there, and let the water do the work."

Jack nodded, rising up from his seat and letting the water continue to flow around him as he settled into a bed – one with a similarly waterproofed sheet - and joined in the prodding, testing his organs as the bruises began to fade; the smaller of the cuts were gone completely.

"I have to ask..." The secretary broke the silence no more than a minute after they had lapsed into its embrace. "... are you always that... alert?"

"No." Jack shook his head a little, still splashing around the cool waters as they attempted to heal his skin.

"Ah... I see. I am guessing this is the pain, then?"

"... maybe." Jack spoke in what Louise was rapidly realizing was a sheepish tone. "Sorry."

"Well, don't let anyone get hurt, I suppose." Squeezed out the green-haired secretary. "Are you often so hurt? I notice that you were acting like those injuries weren't even there, before Miss Valliere... ah, uncovered them."

"Accidents happen."

"Accidents? I take it that you are very active, then? What do you do for a living, Jack of Rapture?"

"Salvage." Jack supplied.

"And what exactly do you salvage? That... is not exactly the role of a noble." The secretary observed. Certainly, there were stories and sometimes news of nobles and knights that would undertake quests, or wander the earth in their travels for treasure, and it was a popular – if dangerous – 'sport' among the more martial families to bring back artifacts to prove their worth. However... that was called 'adventure' rather than 'salvage'. In fact, 'salvage' had implications of looting... which, of course, carried connotations of 'criminal'.

"Anything. Steel, wood and food..." Jack paused as the list stretched out before him. He frowned, thoughtfully. Anything even partially intact was salvaged by his team. As Sal had once put it; 'if it isn't nailed down, take it. If it is nailed down, use a crowbar or something other than that wrench of yours'. Essentially anything that could aid in the rebuilding of Rapture – whether as building materials or as food to feed the builders – would be taken and processed at one of the old soup kitchens set up around Rapture. Then it was distributed as needed across the city.

"For who?"

"Everyone."

"Ah, I see. What happened to your Rapture, that they needed someone like you to work a job like that?"

"War."

That answer, more than any other, chilled the green-haired secretary

"S-still... was everything getting better back there?" Spoke up Louise, arching an eyebrow as Jack returned to poking a bruise on his shoulder blade. "When you... when you left?"

_Or, more accurately, when I took you. _Louise, at times, hated that voice in her head.

"Yes." Jack nodded, speaking with a conviction that belied his own doubts. Sometimes, Sal had wondered; were they truly helping, or simply prolonging the suffering of the broken city before it finally fell to the depths of the sea?

Never mind that, Tenenbaum had said. There were people that need help.

"And what of your Rapture now?" Queried the green-haired secretary beside him.

"... I don't know."

A pitying look entered Longueville's eyes, even as she daintily placed a hand to her collarbone a sympathetic breath filling her lungs. "It must be painful. To be separated from your home, I mean."

Jack remained silent, for a moment, then nodded quietly. "... yes."

"And... I also presume that it would be the same for family, too."

Louise wordlessly growled, grinding her teeth.

The green haired secretary quirked a head to the side; "... tell me about them?"

"Are you sure this is appropriate?" Snapped the pinkette.

Longueville paused, as if unsure. "I'm sorry... I was merely curious..."

"Its fine." Jack finalized, also poking at a disappeared wound on his arm; it had been a gash, sliced open by stray debris when he had been punched out of the tower by a golem. Now it was all but gone; including some of the scarring on his forearm, too. Jack idly traced where the scarring would have been, and now he chose to sigh.

_Family..._

"I'm... fine."

Louise frowned. Her familiar didn't sound it.

Then again, he was recovering from several injuries that – thankfully – required only the attentions of a water mage, and none of the more expensive reagents used for healing.

"And... I believe this would be my queue to leave." Smiled Longueville, if a little awkwardly.

**= The Headmaster's Office = **

As Longueville left the view of the ball that he was scrying from, Osmond gave a short hum while he stayed deep in thought. This Jack was becoming an ever more interesting part of his worries. To be fair, the interesting part was what kept the man from simply bumping the matter up a few ranks and letting Henrietta solve the problem for him. Instead, he turned to face the balding Jean Colbert, who was tapping the crystal ball with some worry.

"You have this locked on to Miss Longueville?" He asked incredulously, sputtering as his analytical mind crunched through the spellwork that was wrapped around the orb of crystal and glass. It was not as ornate as crystal balls usually were, a simple brass cup holding up, padded from scratching the ball by a simple circle of velvety fabric. "Isn't that..."

"If you want to have a turn, you are more than welcome to have a peek." Ribbed the headmaster, knowing full well that the mage-teacher before him would refuse. Especially should he discover that Longueville had put up wards somewhere; she was invisible past a certain point. This worried him, though less so than the fact that she had lain down mousetraps around underneath her desk.

Jean flushed red. Osmond chuckled: the man always did have a dampening streak of caution the width of Tristania, completely at odds with the popular myth of fire users and their personalities, though doubtless that would have not been true a handful of decades ago. "And don't worry about me being obsessed, Jean, she is not the only one it is locked on to."

"... you know, this should worry me even more." Deadpanned Colbert, even as he settled back down into a seat. "We are in a school here, full of students of all ages."

"None of which have been at the attentions of my crystal ball, I'd wager my beard on that."

"That doesn't reassure me." Sighed Jean.  
And so the teasing would continue: "And so it shouldn't coming from an old man like me~!" Singsonged the headmaster as he walked over to a tray, and poured out a pair of cups for the two of them.

"We do have more concerning matters." The teacher quickly returned. He accepted the poffered cup of tea. He breathed its aroma for a moment, before returning to the conversation.

Osmond made a face more commonly suited to having tasted gutter swill than the frankly excellent tea he had served himself. "Yes, indeed we do." The crystal ball alighted again to the man's touch, showing Jack speaking with his pink haired master. Some argument or another about his recklessness, or her loss of face in light of his actions. The familiar reflects the mage, or something such as that. He had seen overzealous students make that speech again and again to countless familiars, some of which were to never truly understand those words. Knowing what was coming long before it reached Jack's ears, he gave the crystal ball a tap and closed it. "Again our mysterious man proves ever the more puzzling." Chuckled the headmaster.

A nod was the only reply Jean Colbert gave in return. "Yes, yes he does... grow on you, doesn't he?"

The headmaster cackled as he turned to his window, now neatly bisected by a narrow beam of fire. "Impressed, or jealous?"

"To be fair, a little of both. I envy his control." The fire mage admitted, briefly reminding the headmaster of the scorching the man had given the castle walls. "I would certainly fear to see what his homeland was like, to produce someone such as he, though I had gotten to thinking that maybe miss Valliere has done their world a favor by removing a monster from it."

"Calling people names now, are we? I recall you cracking down hard on such things a year back, Jean the Flame Snake."

A frown crossed his features. "Old Man Osmond..." Was his vague plea and crude attempt at verbal riposte.

In answer, the headmaster laughed briefly, then returned to scanning the inventory of missing items. His frown creased as he neared the bottom of the list. "Though I must admit that she may have also removed a leader of some kind. You saw how he walked, and talked."

Both nodded, remembering their first meeting with the lean, sharp-eyed man.

"If so, I believe Henrietta would like to meet him."

"She will have to, eventually, but do not think they will meet so soon. For now, the hunt for Foquet is causing quite a stir, and should be our focus."

"Especially given the items stolen." Jean intoned gravely.

A sigh. "Them?"

"Them." The teacher confirmed.

"How many?"

A wince. "Three."

"Well, we'll have to get word out in the morning, then."

= **Hospital Wing** =

The pinkette had turned suddenly when the water had suddenly began to flow from his body, leaving his unmarked torso bare to the air around him. Jack had shivered, and was now reaching out for his clothes, tugging his ragged sweater over his neck, moving with a fluidity that had been missing while he had been hurt. Silently, Louise cursed herself. The familiar reflected the mage, certainly, but the treatment of one's familiar also reflected the mage. Mother had never let anyone else groom her manticores, a task she reserved for herself. While Louise thought doing the same was grossly inappropriate, the fact still remained that she had been neglectful of this man... no, her familiar.

"F-familiar."

"..."

Ugh. This again? Louise's face curled up, as if forcing the words from her lips. "Jack."

"Yes?" A small twitch at the corner of his mouth. Louise's cheeks burned a she realized how much her familiar was enjoying her... her humiliation. That was it! Humiliation!

"You..." She frowned, and fell silent as Jack rose, drawing aside curtains and stepping out into the corridor, as it were.

Something yelped, jumping back. There was a curse, and someone tripped over the long black robes traditional for the students here, and soon enough a busty redhead and her shorter, blue-haired companion tumbled across the floor, the latter of which ahead of the former. From where they landed, the bluette was then put through a series of pressures and movements that men would have paid to experience, even as the tanned Germanian girl righted herself again.

She giggled unashamedly as stood, her face framed with a tenderly placed hand, her other arm moving to cup her elbow, pushing up her bounties as her hips twisted to pull the rest of her figure into profile.

It was something almost practised, given how many times she had used it. There were few if any men that could cme through the experience unscathed.

Two seconds later, it failed completely as Jack turned away, and picked up – although given her state the man actually had to peel her – the dazed Tabitha off the floor.

"Alright?" He asked.

"Yes." She answered.

"Stunned." Jack observed.

"Yes." She nodded.

"Chair?" He offered.

"Please." Tabitha accepted.

She stood, dusting her robe and then producing a book from within them. The bluette sat down neatly on the chair by the window, and fell silent once more. Jack returned to his bed, and glanced at the two.

"What?"

Kirche huffed like an extinguished candle.

"Well, pooh. If little girls interested you more than these." She shifted her arms slightly, allowing the material of her shirt to pull tighter against her chest. "Then you could have just said."

Louise flushed cherry red. "Zerbst, just what are you sayi-"

"Mind you, that was the longest conversation I'd ever heard from Tabitha." The Germanian continued, completely ignoring the Valliere scion. "She really must be taken to you."

"Really?" Jack queried.

"Really." Echoed the grinning redhead.

The splicer nodded. "Ah."

"Yes." Tabitha added, flipping a page. She stared at it briefly, then flipped the page again, continuing. Something seemed to strike her, and she glanced briefly at Jack. "Talk, I mean."

"See? She likes you; she's even in denial about it!" Gushed the Zerbst redhead. "She's even in denial about it! To be honest, its about time she got herself a good man underneath her... And _what. A. Man! _Much more impressive than those Tristanian boys I've been leading on these past two years."

"Zerbst..." Louise growled, tone full of warning. "Just what are you saying about my countrymen?"

"Oh really, darling, all that I'm saying is that your men are so soft." She mimed cupping a ball in one hand. "Like putty, the lot of them." The Germanian pretended to squeeze, then giggled. "No endurance, no creativity... a disappointing lot, it seems."

From behind a curtain, there was an offended, shrill "Hey!"

"... Guiche?"

Jack nodded. "Guiche."

Louise drew back the curtain, revealing a mass of bandages and blonde hair.

"Mind your own business!" She shouted, then ripped them back closed to vague protests.

"Right." Kirche chuckled, keeping her 'seduce men' pose, she waggled a finger back and forth. "Where was I..."

The pinkette continued fuming.

"Soft." Jack prompted.

"Good boy, paying attention." She purred, all but flowing like molten lava across the room to meet him, curling her arms around his waist as she planted herself onto his lap. "Now what would you like for a reward?"

The pinkette all but exploded through the force of her sheer indignity. "Zerbst, you go too far! Get off him!"

"Valliere, you don't go far enough!" Laughed the Germanian girl. "The world is boring enough as it is without you panties-in-a-twist Tristanians, you don't have to ruin the fun of others as well as yourselves!"

Beet red now, Louise screeched in horror. "Have you no sense of shame?"

"Have you no sense of fun?" Kirche returned.

"Have you no sense of 'let the patients rest'? Whined Guiche from behind the curtain.

"... outside." Jack sighed, grabbing both girls by the collar and marching them outside. He set them both down outside the entrance to the hospital wing, and then simply shut the door in their faces.

"'ello, partner." Chirped the sword.

"Derf." Jack murmured in response.

"Just you wait: Two... one..." Sang the blade.

The arguing began a new. Jack buried his face in his hand, and sunk back into his bed.

He glanced briefly at the bluette still reading at his bedside.

"Always?" He asked.

"Always." She sighed.

Jack winced as a scream shook the windows. "My sympathy."

A brief nod, as a book was produced and flipped open.

"My thanks."


	14. Zero's Annoying Sword

_**Whoowee... basically, I'M BAAAAACK! Its been a rough year for me, but now things are getting back into gear with both Toyhammer and Zero Shock. A lot of the new stuff has been posted in Spacebattles (Rogue_Vector is my username there) and you can find this chapter, the bits after it and ToyHammer snippets on the story threads there.**_

* * *

The letter burned quickly in the night, even as the pigeon that had carried the message took wing with her own message inside. The tinderbox snapped shut, and Foquet snarled as she took stock of her loot, though she knew that it was less her greed and more her worry that drove her to seek this particular distraction. Inventory, inventory...

_Damn. Damn damn damn damn!_

It wasn't an assignment that she had set to crumble into ashes behind her; it was a damned death sentence! To engage him again in open battle, and to purposely draw it out so as to test him? That would be the death of her! She'd last... minutes.

_But there is always a chance._

Plans began to swirl about her mind; _golems, lots of golems._

That was her only hope, but at her state now she was going to need a week at least to fully recover from the willpower depletion that she now suffered from. Out of public sight, and with her get-me-up potion's effects fading, the thief began to shake and stumbled across the room to her treasures, sorting through heavy gold, glass orbs and simple engraved wands to try and keep her mind off her imminent death. Those were useless to her; they held no value but to the noble families that had donated them, and would soon be recovered piece by piece by passing watchmen as they combed the forest. It would perpetuate the myth of Foquet the Crumbling Dirt's disdain for selling noble families' heirlooms.

_Others, however..._

"Better get these fenced soon." She muttered to herself, tossing some valuable bauble into her case. The thief flinched as her ringing ears set a phantom whine through her senses.

_Such light..._

Foquet picked out a long box – one typically used to store swords of one shape or sharpness or another – and pulled it open to examine its contents. As she did, her eyes creased into surprise as she pulled the weapon free.

Was this... a mace? Unlike anything she had seen before... her hands traced over the smooth metal, and spotted the words etched onto the side – a trader's mark, she guessed. No, wait; it was not etched, like she had suspected; the words were painted on with a precise hand; she could feel the smoothness of the paint on metal; though mostly flat, it had a slight rise. There was an unbelievably precise hand at work on this piece... she rubbed her finger along it for a moment, eyeing the unknown script.

Something niggled at the back of her mind. She had seen this before. The font, the style... there, a series of symbols that she remembered. But where had the thief seen them before!? Her mind raced. Longueville. The idle secretary had seen this.

_Where?_ Her mind racked itself, a worried frown crinkling her nose and deepening her scowl.

"Where..." She whispered to herself.

That was it! '_Where?_'. That single word, growled by that man. And he was connected to the symbols because his own weapon carried those same markings!

"Oh, found something, did you?" Queried a voice at the doorstep of her hide. Foquet didn't even jump, used to the intrusion already as she threw a cloth – formerly bedsheets used during an 'improvisation' from a heist long ago – over the artifact. She turned to the man, though not without the dread that had settled into her stomach. She was still angered over how her guest had simply walked through half a forest's worth of prepared wards and alarms without tripping a single one.

"Nothing." The thief snapped, tossing a goblet wreathed in cold flame into a travelling case. "Except, maybe, that I need to improve my wards."

"You don't, though the challenge is gladly accepted. Messy ward work, though." Namely, golem-trying-to-kill-you messy. Foquet was never subtle when it came to show time, but she hated the scowl that crossed her face unbidden. The visitor nodded, smiling in response to Foquet's sudden snarl at her defences – mental and magical - being so casually dismissed. "You must remember that I know your mind, thief."

"And I yours. What was the purpose of that last job? Sure, it was going to happen anyway, but to wait and time it just as that man was passing by? And then you're sending me at him again!?" She roared. "You know that I won't win another straight fight with that man! I barely managed to limp away from the first one. This time, he'll know how to fight my golems; he did better than anyone that tried to stop me in the past had done put together, damn you!"

"It is simply because you do not poke a hornet's nest with your finger."

"A poor choice of words, I'd say. That man is a literal nest of hornets, given how his fight with the da Gramont boy ended."

"That wasn't a metaphor. You'll have to find some way of testing his limits. You have golems, don't you? Use them."

Foquet chose to glower at his dismissal of sending her towards her doom, even as she placed a jewelled box to follow the other baubles. "You seem to make it a habit of trying to tell me things I already know."

"Why should I stop?" Was the reply, infuriating as always. "I'll miss out all the fun of seeing your face twist like that. It'll give you wrinkles when you get older, you know."

"You assume I will live to be of that age, given the work that you require of me."

"Well, in that case I'll make sure to enjoy your pretty face until then." A snap of his fingers, and the thief froze in place as her body shuddered, and she fell to the ground, gasping for breath as the visitor crossed the floor to pick her up and toss her onto the cot shoved into the corner of the room.

"You do know I can take whatever I wish." Teased the visitor. Foquet snarled, but couldn't do much else. She felt her mind melting away as the figure examined the thief's wares. Priceless, to many, but most of what he saw he had seen before long ago. Ripping away cloth, he grinned, eyes alighting with glee. "Oh, I do like the looks of this."

**= Louise's Room =**

It was morning.

Rising from his corner of the room, Jack ignored the healer's instructions to stay down and rest as he stretched strained muscles, curled up his toes and scratched at his jaw, pausing as nails scraped over sharp spikes of hair. Okay, there was a lot of stubble there now. Too bad he hadn't gone to sleep with a razor when he had been summoned by Louise. He was soon padding out to the window and peering out to the rising sun; it crested the hill to the east a few minutes later, blinding him in brilliant sunlight. He blinked at the sudden brightness, unable to shake the memory of being lit up by a spotlight, choosing to cross one arm across his face to protect him from the rays.

Louise sat up as she too was dazzled by the sunlight, her frazzled hair giving her a halo of little dancing lights completely at odds with her current state and demeanour. She had given him quite a railing after he had been released from the hospital ward, given that he had manhandled her out the door, and left her alone and 'defenceless' against the 'Zerbst battering ram', and it was at that particular moment he saw little difference between the pink-haired girl and one of his Little Sisters. Except, maybe, for the fact that she yelled a lot more.

Said girl yawned, dressed only in a short, almost transparent nightgown.

"You, _idiot._ Day of Void. No classes until afternoon. Let me sleep more."

Flopping back, she was promptly lost to the they who were awake and upright.

Jack blinked, shrugged as she rolled back over, and stepped out into the hallway, abandoning Louise to the dreams. His stomach rumbled; a keening, almost crunchy sound that was followed by a hollow snarl.

He looked down at his complaining stomach.

_Breakfast... would be nice._

It was some moments later that the splicer padded down the hallway, his boots pat-pat-pattering across the stones as he wound his way across the school to the dining hall. The damages from last night was still there; an inanimate golem's arm was embedded into the ground in front of him, still attached to the shoulder portion of the stone torso that he had cut through. The rest of the torso – with legs still attached – were plunged head first into a nearby wall, the legs skill comically askew where the animate earth had turned back into stone.

As he crossed a courtyard, Jack felt the stares on him as he eased the door open, and simply stepped, unchallenged, into the Alviss dining hall. The early risers tended to be dressed in servant's uniforms, or were too focused on nursing their morning mugs of steaming drinks to talk to Jack.

_Except one._

"Ah, Mister Jack!" Siesta chirped, rags in hand as she wiped down a table while her other arm held up the tray of condiments usually used to suit a dish to the tastes of the eater. She quickly finished, replacing the tray and then skipping cheerfully over to the splicer. Jack recoiled at her speed; she was moving far too swiftly for someone of her dress and stature; weaving past tables and chairs without care, her long skirt fluttering in her wake, then simply flowing around passing servants as she moved towards him, all the while a happy smile on her face. The splicer instinctively reached for his weapon, the wrench drawing halfway as nightmares of butchers' hooks, scuttling feet and twisting limbs assaulted him just as ferociously as the hungry eyes and eager expression worn by the maid.

He crushed the sudden urge cave in her skull with the metal workman's mace, even as her gleaming smile sent a tingle down his spine.

"_Good morning_, Mister Jack!"

Jack... blinked. "Siesta."

"Sleep well, Mister Jack?"

"... yes?"

"Uhm, Mister Jack? I heard there had been an attack on the academy last night. Would you happen to know anything about that?" The maid quietly – like one conspirator to another - whispered as she stepped out into the aisles between tables, starting on another one with her rag. She smiled pleasantly as Jack lifted the tray for her, and began picking each little bottle of sauces and spices in turn, sniffing and sometimes tasting them as the maid worked away at the dust that had settled onto the table overnight. While she worked, she began to speak again. "My friend said that there was this massive golem that was made of the outer wall, and it started attacking one of the towers."

"That's right." Jack confirmed, though his voice was marred by a lisp on account of a tongue that felt like it was on fire. He tucked away the little pot of red powder, and continued with the next one. Siesta saw this, giggled, and pointed out a small jug of cold milk, which the splicer gratefully began to drip onto his burning tongue.

"So there was? I heard this magnificent crash from my room in the servants' quarter, but the matron told us to stay inside. We all could hear the sounds of fighting outside. Martieu – the head chef – said that it sounded like there were at least a dozen mages 'slinging spells', as he put it. He used to be in the armies, you know, so he knows this kind of thing!"

Jack simply shook his head. "Only two."

Something faltered in the maid's face. "So you were there? That's... wait, what? Two!?" Siesta did a double take and all but screeched her surprise, clutching at her rag with both hands as she leaped back from the splicer a good two feet before he could blink. "There were only two? But... but Martieu said the spells were being cast so fast... and they were so powerful, too... he figured that there was at least four fire mages, just from how much heat the spells were..."

"Only two." The splicer repeated, gently setting the tray back down.

"Two..." Voice catching in her throat, the maid's head shot up, eyes locking onto the splicer's charred hands. "Wait... that means... you were one of them, weren't you? That makes you the absurdly powerful fire mage... and the thief was the earth mage, wasn't he?"

"She..." The Rapturian's brows furrowed. "And...yes."

"Well... hah... look at me." Siesta giggled nervously as she looked down at her hands; they were shaking, trembling as she held it up. Her eyes went back up to Jack, who arched an eyebrow.

"... what?" He queried, nonplussed.

The girl began to laugh; soft, hearty chuckles that helped her relax. Her eyes alight, she stepped back from Jack and gently bowed. "I'm sure... I'm sure you're supposed to say 'I'm not going to hurt you', or something like that, Mister Jack."

"Really?"

"Yes." She chirped. "It usually helps when a man promises not to hurt hisImeanta defenceless little girl, just barely of marriageable age and not attached to anyone whatsoever, who is looking forward to starting a family a..."

The maid trailed off, catching sight of a stern, matronly woman glaring at her.

"Uhm, maybe I got a little carried away there, Mister Jack. May I help you with anything? I'm going to have to work, but... well, serving you food would be working, wouldn't it?"

"Ah..." What was that food, that usually came canned, really fluffy... "Bread?"

Siesta brightened. "Bread it is, Mister Jack."

**= Former Fontaine Futuristics, Floor F Fanroom =**

Things scuttled through vents and swung around the idle fan blades above as two figures stalked the hallway below. Sinclair and Salvatore looked up, torches in hand as they scanned the hiding places above for their quarry. Given their target, that was easier said than done.

"I told you we shouldn't have used a spider splicer as a test subject." Muttered Salvatore. Aloud, he shouted at the ceiling. "HEY JENKINS, COME BACK HERE! WE KNOW YOU'RE UP THERE!"

Up in the tangle of pipes, wiring and walkways above the two, their quarry shouted back. "NO!"

"We'll give you a pay rise!" Sinclair appeased. "C'mon man, do this for science!"

"Fuck you! Your science got me killed!" There was a clatter and clang as someone leaped from a large pipe and swinging around to land on a catwalk above them. He stood there, in the light of the torches, and looked down at his employers.

Sinclair frowned, adjusting his waistband as the spider splicer above him sat on the edge of the walkway. He wasn't being aggressive at all – in fact, the man looked downright depressed now. "But we brought you back, Jenkins!"

Arms flailing, Leeroy grabbed the hand railing and leaped down another step, still glaring at his employers. "The point is that you got me killed in the first place! It was bad enough with you doing it on purpose, but when you kill me on accident? Remember that Little Sister's teddy bear? That was fucking traumatic, that was what it was!"

"That time was an accident!" Sinclair shouted.

"_Exactly_!" Leeroy shouted back.

There was some more flailing of arms. "It was a teddy bear!"

"IT WAS _ON FIRE_, DAMMIT!"

"That wasn't our fault! We had no idea that she would come into her plasmids then!"

"THEN EXPLAIN WHY THE BEAR WAS BITING ME! BITING! GOOD GOD, THE TEETH!"

"I swear we have no clue where Annie got a hold of real bear teeth!"

"You're fucking crazy, the lot of you!"

"I KNOW!" Sal roared, his arms alighting with Incinerate! "WE'VE ALL GONE THROUGH THAT STAGE, JENKINS!"

"And Jack brought us back from that madness. Mr. Ryan saved us." Sinclair whispered gently, letting out a small sigh. Sal tweaked an eyebrow at the portly businessman. That was just too... too idealistic of the shrewd, cynical man. Either he'd changed, or Sinclair certainly knew how to push buttons.

Time to join in. "Yeah. I remember that bit. He had to wrestle me down, didn't you know? Just to give me a tonic to save me, he nearly had his arm ripped off. Didn't just shoot me like the rabid dog that I was. I figure every spider splicer alive today owes their lives and their minds to Jack Ryan. I'm thinking that he did the same to you too, Jenkins." A sigh. "You... and not only you, we all owe him that much..."

"Asking for favors that aren't yours to call in is a dangerous game, Salvatore." Growled one spider splicer to the other, though now his voice carried the weight of resignation in it. Jenkins nodded, briefly. "I'll do it."

He glared at Salvatore, then to Sinclair, and as he looked from one man to the next, his coarse growl declared; "Not for you, not for him."

Sinclair clarified. "For Jack Ryan."

"For Jack Ryan." Echoed Salvatore, followed closely behind by Jenkins.

**= Courtyard, Tristian Academy =**

His longest wait had been four hours long.

"Can you shut up already? Its bad enough when its a person won't shut up, but a sword!"

It had been for an ambush. Seated in a cramped vent, chin on his knees, the air suffused with the steady thub-thub-thub of the fans circulating the scent of half-rotted fish and stagnant sea water.

"So as I was saying; an earth mage, a fire mage and a water mage walk into a bar..."

Jack had calmly waited through the entire four hours until the caged Little Sister came into sight, pushed along by her captors inside that cart turned prison.

"Jack! Familiar, make this sword shut up!"

The first to go down had been the leader; alert, attentive, he had not expected the telekinetically thrown dustbin to literally scoop him up and send him flying out the window.

"What is it with you and dirty jokes?"

He then worked on the two rearguard splicers; one burned where he stood, the other's submachinegun had frozen in her hands before a side swipe from a wrench caved in her cheekbone.

"I have a lot of them, pinkie!"

Leading the splicers had been a houdini.

"Can you stop telling them?"

Who had suddenly found a wall of shotgun pellets cutting off his escape – and most of the musculature of his legs.

"No! Look, I'm a sword, and with all these jokes... well, just look around! I'm making a killing, so to speak. Hehehehe."

The last to go down had been the carter, who was suddenly wreathed in lightning then slapped around with a wrench.

"Give 'em the good ol' one-two punch!"

"They look like they've been slapped with a fish!"

Since the arrival of the sword and pinkette, it had been two minutes. Jack was massaging his temples with a thumb and forefinger, even as Louise and Derflinger continued to hammer on each others' nerves.

"Yes, but at least it was a funny fish!"

"Why you little..."

"Big, girlie! My length is huge and I'm just as broad, little miss tiny! I've seen heads with bigger bumps on them than on you!"

"That's it, you're-"

"'ey, pinkie, didn't you know that I'm speaking telepathically? Only you can hear me, y'know? That's why they're all staring at you. Cuz they think you're crazy!"

Well, the sword hammered at the pink one's nerves. She didn't seem to be scoring any points as it were.

"You... what..." The pinkette whirled around as the sword started singing a song off-key and horribly, though the slapped-by-fish expressions of the crowd gathering didn't change; perhaps most had been rendered deaf? "N-no! The sword's talking, really! Its... aaaaaah, you must think I'm all crazy! FINE! I'll just go bury you deep under the ground, rust away like the lump of useless junk you were!"

"Lying." Jack muttered.

"Jack?"

The splicer nodded 'hello'. "He's lying."

"What!?"

"Awww, c'mon! You gotta be kidding me... play along, partner, its fun watching her go monochrome!"

"You! You insufferable..."

Jack snatched up the sword before she could reach it, throwing the loop of leather over his shoulder and letting it settle onto his back.

By making movements too fast, too smooth for him.

Odd.

Scratching the itch on the back of his hand, he eyed Louise as her rage continued.

"Give it back! I want to break that impudent scrap-metal..."

"Hey, its quality metal to you, lassie!"

Angrily, Louise whipped out her wand, pointing it at the splicer, who immediately – and, she dully noted to herself, for the second time – plucked the wand from her fingers before she could even begin to chant out an aria.

The situation quickly devolved to the point where Louise was hopping up and down on her tiptoes to try and reach for her wand, hissing threats like a wronged cat as her splicer familiar dangled the stick of pearwood over her head.

Louis leaped again, screaming at the top of her voice. "Give it back! Give it back, I said! As your master I command you, my familiar, to obey me and give me back my wand!"

"Calm down." Jack said. He glanced around, and saw a mirror. "Look."

The mirror showed her with one foot planted on his hip, the other kicking in his knee as she hung off his elbow and with her left arm curled around his elbow as she tried to reach for her wand with her right. She looked ever so childish... Louise's cheeks began to burn as she realised that they were standing in a busy dining hall, with people were staring... and soon they would be whispering, and the rumor mill would turn...

She uncoupled herself from the man instantly, stepping back and staggering as she tried to regain her balance. Louise almost tipped over, were it no for Jack stepping forward and seizing her outstretched arm. He righted her, pulling her back onto her feet, and stood back.

"You... you... you're doing this on purpose!" She accused.

Jack narrowed his eyes, if only slightly. "... am not."

"Yes, yes you are!"

"Not." He insisted.

Louise's nostrils flared. "Are!"

"Are." Chimed in the sword.

The splicer standing between them palmed his face, shaking his head ever so slightly.

For crying out loud...

"See! You are!" She roared. "You think you're so clever, trying to make me say 'not'? You really are just trying to make me look childish!"

"... It seems like you don't need any help, Valliere. You're doing just fine by yourself." Giggled the Zerbst scion behind her. Again going bright red, Louise whirled around and scowled at the busty Germanian girl.

"You...!"

Jack stepped back, away from the two fiery personae as the inevitable volley fire of insults were traded, and turned around to meet the inevitable wake of the redhead, the more sedate bluette Tabitha, who poffered him his unfinished bread.

A nod, returning the greeting and accepting the bread. "Thank you."

The bluette nodded. "You're welcome."

Behind her, the shark-headed Sylphid trilled happily.

"Kyuuuii~!"

"Sylphid."

"Kyu-kyuii!"

Thunk. "No eating. His."

**= Forest near Tristian Academy =**

It had been some twelve hours since Foquet had burst through the walls of Tristain Academy, and with her trail still fresh the local policing forces – the Watch in particular – had been deployed to comb the forests in an attempt to track her down.

Given that she had who knows how long to prepare for her escape, it had obviously gone badly for the mundane policing forces.

Through the night, casualties had mounted. Watchmen went missing, were chased in circles by golems and bogged down by the magic-enchanted traps that were laid in he wake of the thief.

In response, a detachment of the Rangers were sent in.

A trio of such Rangers advanced slowly, cautiously, but most importantly quietly, through the woods, blending to the point where they were mere passing shadows as the clouds rolled overhead, a whisper in the wind as it breezed between the trees. The trio wore lincon greens and muted greys mixed with faded browns to blend in with their surroundings. At the hip of each one was a sword, on the other hip a well stocked quiver of war arrows. Their hands clung to the slender bows of their profession – that of Rangers – as they slipped through the brush.

One held up his hand, freezing the others.

He pointed forwards, and then to himself.

Advancing cautiously, he reached the edge of the clearing, where one of the traps had been sprung; a stone sphere that had encased a watchman inside. Ignoring the chill running up his spine, the ranger spotted the crumbled remains of a golem; one that had run out of the willpower that fueled it, after it had chased the watchman, scattering his team, and lead him into the prepared trap.

"Damn mages." The ranger muttered, eying the stone ball.

He briefly wondered about the man encased inside; he most certainly had family. What of them? Princess Henrietta had certainly opened coffers for the dependents of those that died on the line of duty, but... it was only a small comfort to those who were grieving a dead family member. He knew that such thoughts were horribly unprofessional for him to think, but he had worked with watchmen plenty of times before, and they were all local men.

It was only a small stretch of the imagination that it was his brother trapped inside.

After all, he had seen little Aubert marching off with the other watchmen last night.

_Damn._

Stepping forward, he circled around the clearing; right until he could see the opposite hemisphere of the stone ball.

A hole. It had a hole, with a head inside. One that was flailing about weakly. The watchman inside – not Aubert, thank the Founder - was still alive, trapped inside the stone sphere and crying out with dry lips and the look of a man in need of an outhouse.

It was no coffin, the Ranger sighed with relief, but a prison.

He made to step out onto the clearing, eyes fixed to the ground for traps.

But then again, there was the matter of the golem tapping his shoulder.

The ranger turned around, and eyed the silent construct as it drew back its fist for a punch.

"Well... damn."

He leaped back, into the clearing, out of the golem's reach, tripping the second layer of magic traps.

Just in time for the sphere of stone to close around him.

Task complete, the golem crumbled to dust.

William of Milean sighed, face to face with the bulging eyes of his two companions. "Uh... help?"

**= Township of Milean Watch House, twenty kilometers from Tristain Academy =**

Headmaster Osmond stroked his beard thoughtfully as the first casualties from the search for Foquet were brought into the courtyard of the watch house. Commander Vines unbuckled a musketeer issue sword-belt and set it down on the ground, his pistol crossbow following. Taking off his helmet, he approached the Headmaster of Tristain Academy and saluted, briefly, before returning to train his experienced eye over the mounting casualties.

There was a long, drawn out sigh escaping his lips, letting his shoulders deflate and sag. "That's two that have been brought back so far, Headmaster. We've got eight more who can't be moved, and the last patrol that came back to town reported they took another half dozen overnight. That's almost a quarter of the men seconded to me for this picnic of yours, and all in a single night."

"It was my suggestion that Foquet be sought out, that is correct." The bearded one 'hmm'd thoughtfully as he walked to the first of the casualties. "But I did request the deployment of the Manticore Corps or the Aeris Knights, who could search from the air rather than have to pick their way through the forest on the ground."

A huff of annoyance escaped the Commander's nose. It was no secret that the watch's commander disliked magic. "Oh, I'm so sorry that my men can't fly, Headmaster. Let me magic up some of those Germanian golem-hammers as well. They've been a bloody nuisance all through the search; buried underground or pressed up against a cliff, they climb out and give my men a little chase – long enough for us to lose track of where we are – and slow down another search party to find the first one. Or that damned thief just makes it look like she's put a golem somewhere – a head here, an outline there – and my men get all bogged down for the next hour waiting for it to jump 'em. Its a good thing the Queen deployed that Ranger squad; we'd have a dozen of he search parties lost and stumbling about in the woods if it weren't for them."

Osmond nodded, ignoring the continuing muttered curses of the furious Commander as he went about setting orders to the other watchmen. "Again, Commander, I do understand your troubles, but it is of utmost importance that the artifacts that Foquet has stolen be recovered. I am not about to sit around and do nothing, either; I will do my best to help your men. If you could bring me out to the casualties, I may be able to unbind them."

Some would stay, to take care of the wounded and disabled, but for the most part the rest would return to searching. The headmaster watched the watchmen's faces as they trudged back to the carriage and climbed aboard, checking and double-checking crossbows and swords as they went out for another 'dance with the dirt'.

Foquet's plan of escape had – as usual of a thief of this class – been immaculate in its way of slowing down pursuit, and yet retaining her status as a thief and mage of the highest caliber.

"All the lads are getting too wary. We're moving too slowly and can't search fast enough with all these damned traps. Foquet's going to slip away at this rate." Vines scratched at the stubble of his close-cropped hair, before replacing his helmet. "Our men don't like leaving a watchman behind, especially after they've fallen into one of these traps. Rangers doubly so. It takes four men at least to get 'em back to the house, but more often than not they're just stuck there; we leave behind two men to take care of one trapped, so that's three people taken off the search for each 'casualty'."

"Something very typical of Foquet. I've read about this particular tactic before."

Osmond nodded, even as he pulled free his wand and eyed the first of Foquet's victims. The watchman – a corporal, judging by the chevrons on his helmet – was encased in a sphere of grey stone. There were others, too; some simply had their boots petrified or turned into stone to keep them from walking, while others looked like a golem in the shape of a woman's body had curled itself around them and then transmuted into stone, trapping them in a most embarrassing cage. Mud that was normally ignored when it splashed onto them had dried instantly, filling their armor with dirt and dust, forcing them to slow and tire quickly.

It was a clever tactic; to incapacitate rather than kill her pursuers.

After all, a comrade screaming for help sapped attention far more than a dead body ever would. The use of the stone spheres also drew away from their determination to capture the thief; if a fellow watchman or ranger died, they would be encouraged and emboldened to find the thief out of revenge and a sense of duty to the fallen.

Instead it was an embarrassment to be caught in a trap of this nature; something that would also sap the will of the watchmen to venture into even more heavily trapped areas and search; after all, they didn't want to be stuck inside a sphere of stone. And for the ones that were they did not want to be left out in the forest helpless at night, and so called up their comrades to evacuate them; something that – in the tight spaces of the forest – was a time consuming and arduous job.

It was uncomfortable, messy and humiliating work for the watchmen, something not helped by the macho attitude of the men around Tristain. Recovering a casualty would also take the efforts of four – or, more realistically, half a dozen – watchmen and force them to 'rely' on uppity nobles to magic them out of their prisons. That, or spend a lengthy 'sentence' in the stonework stocks as they were slowly – and dangerously – chipped out by their comrades.

So simultaneously, the thief was distracting her pursuers, demolishing morale, driving a wedge between 'commoners' and 'nobles', and generally making herself a nuisance to the watch forces.

All the while she remained hidden and relatively unharmed.

Behind him, his secretary eyed the newest of the casualties as they were rolled out into the shade of hastily erected tents. Some were understandably irate, while others were more subdued. Worried mothers, sisters and wives darted out and around the watch house, taking care of their loved ones as best they could.

"Well, let us get started then."

Osmond brought out his wand and began to pick apart the enchantments that held them in place; dirt, it seemed, had been transmuted into sand to move it up and around the man in a prison of fluid sand, then transmuted again into stone. A relatively effortless feat when one was a triangle class mage. But a terrifyingly effective one. The headmaster pushed willpower into his wand, then tapped the stone; turning it all into sand again. He stepped back as the sand flowed out, then abruptly advanced to catch the falling form of the Corporal.

He turned to Vines, who was already shouting for the healers to give the man a checkup.

The headmaster turned to the commander, and again stroked his beard. "There. I think I have the gist of it now. Where are the others?"

"Right this way, Headmaster. There's a watchman and a ranger trapped in a clearing. They're the closest ones, and we've got another pair of rangers right next to 'em with stone boots."

**=Louise's Room=**

_Dear sister..._

Louise chewed on the feathery end of her pen, not caring for the warnings she had been given as a child; its not proper for a young lady, her tutor had said, and the habit was distinctly unhealthy, her sister had said. Well too bad, it calmed her frayed nerves and let her write at night, so even though the sun was still high in the sky the paper-and-pen therapy would go on with half-chewed feathers. The pinkette glared at the blank paper in front of her, as if the words that she wanted to put on it were about to spring into view, leaving her with just the simpler task of copying the letter out word for word from her own hallucinations.

But no, that would be too simple wouldn't it?

It wasn't like whatever powers that be would let her get away with things that easily.

Jack, her familiar, was heaping one trouble atop the other at a dizzying rate. It wasn't like Louise wanted him to be an absurdly powerful mage in his own right; she only wanted a powerful familiar. Like a wolf, or a bear. But instead she got a man who attracted girls to him like moths to a candle, who cut through square-class enchanted stone with a wicked hot lance of fire and but a pause of breath to steady his aim.

Then came the sword.

Ah yes, the talkative sword who seemed to have it in for 'little miss pinky'. Name calling and teasing was one thing when it came from other nobles, her equals and superiors in rank and magic power... but from a sword? Granted, it was magically enchanted, legendary in status and centuries old at least, but it was still a sword.

Well, at least it wasn't her familiar belittling her figure.

Founder knows what would have happened if that were the case.

Louise sighed, and looked outside to the courtyard below; a grassy place for familiars to rest while their masters were around and about. It was an oddly peaceful scene as a tiger curled up with a rabbit's ears draped over its eyes, the rest of the rabbit breathing peacefully on its neck. A mole had excavated half its body volume in dirt, and had made for itself a small ditch to sleep in. A few of the academy servants walked about, refilling a bowl of water here, gingerly walking around the dragon there... and one in particular watched the lone familiar that was neither servant nor animal.

Jack... sat.

He sat with a sword in his lap, oily rag in one hand as he worked the rust off the steel blade, working the length of steel with gentle force as he went through the same motions that she had seen her mother's men-at-arms go through, working oil into rusty patches and scraping them off. Atop the larger and less oily cloth found just under his right knee sat a whetstone and a series of scraps of cloth. Hands – calloused, scarred and strong – moved with idle abandon, uncaring for the razor sharp blade on his lap as he rolled his sleeves and again attacked the rust still clinging onto the blade.

It wasn't an unfamiliar task for him; be rid of the brown, away with the green, soak the red, get it all gone and you were done. The matter of the fact was that it simply took time.

Time enough for his ears to be talked off. Jack wondered if unscrewing the little brass collar would silence the blade.

"You know, its been a very very long time since someone's who used me has gone and given me a good sharpening. I'm really glad I chose you as my partner, partner. Lots of those fancy shmancy knights in their shining armor wouldn't give a damn for the talking sword. Always gets passed off to the squire, who then hands it off to someone else. Got stolen that way a bunch of times, you know. One day you ask for your talking sword and there, poof, he's gone. Got chucked down a well."

The splicer raised an eyebrow. "Why?"

""Uh... well, I'd rather not say but it was about this fair maiden, you see..."

Jack 'accidentally' swept the rag too far, covering up the brass collar used as a mouth. The sword made a sputtering noise and choked on oil, rust and rag.

"Hey, Partner, what was that for? I was about to tell you a good story, y'know? Sit around and listen a while, and I'll tell you lots of things." He chuckles, the brass collar clacking back and twisting just enough to turn into a smile. "Stories about dungeons and dragons..."

The man moved to a rougher cloth, and began to work at a rusty patch of steel. "Derf."

"Yeah, partner?"

"Why?"

Brass met steel as the collar clacked open. "Why what, partner?"

"Talking."

"Why... waddaya mean? Y'know, it really helps if you actually communicate, partner. It really helps with the whole 'swordsman and sword' thing."

"You... ramble."

"Y-yeah, I do. So what's it to ya, partner?"

"Why?"

"Ah, I get it. 'Where there's a will, there's a why', ain't there, partner? Lemme give it to you straight: Because its hard being a talking sword. You humans have it easy. Walking, talking, fighting and eating, it all takes the same things for you; five fingers on each of four limb, three joints on those, all stuck to one big squishy bit with a hard head on top, barring that one time when I cut off this guy's..."

Derflinger paused, the blade shifting around a little in the splicer's lap as it 'stared back' at Jack.

"Right. Anyways, try to imagine this, partner; you aren't born, but made. You're forged in some magician's lab somewhere, given life by the will of not a mother but a mage. And you have only one purpose in your life. Killing. You're made to kill, maim, burn. Enemies of your creator just melt away as you cut through them. Other constructs too, just like you, are killed by you, but not by your hand; its by someone else's.

Someone is controlling you, telling you who to kill. Doesn't matter to you, because its what you were made to do. You don't know anything else. But you have a will, even when you're killing. Men, women... and if the person who picked you up out of the last guy's hand was particularly nasty, children as well.

Kids who just had the bad luck of being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Always shouted for those guys. Think you're sneaky? Well, only until the legendary sword on your back starts singing when you're halfway up a castle wall. Use me on a kid, and I'll scream who you are and what you did at the worst possible moment, whether your past deeds earned me or not.

But here's the important question, partner: can you imagine that? Being someone's weapon, someone's tool?"

Jack sat, very still, for a long moment. He closed his eyes, breathed, and opened them again. "Yes."

Derf clattered lightly. "Well, partner..." The sword made noises typical of breathing in, then letting said breath out slowly. "I just gotta say, its the first time I've known that there's someone that understands you. Its been a long six thousand years, and... it feels damned good, Jack."

And in the edge of the courtyard, green hair swirled in the breeze. Longueville frowned:

That man wasn't normal.

The woman as Longueville had realized this a long time ago. Matilda even more so. He wasn't a noble; his clothes were too ragged around the edges, scuffed and stained. Even brand new, they would have been too plain for the fare of nobles; there were no patterns, no embroidery, no show of craftsmanship. It was clean, for sure, but to her eyes she could see the telltale signs of a working man's clothes. Even so, clothes would be changed, and while he scraped rust off the blade she confirmed her theory as she saw that his hands were too calloused, scarred and worn to be a noble's.

"So... fewer jokes now?" Jack of Rapture asked.

"Naw, its too fun to stop, partner." Derflinger the Spelldrinker, legendary sword, spoke in return. The previous ten minutes of 'conversation' had seen the blade speak more words than she had ever heard from the one who was cleaning it. In short, the verbal situation should have been quite the opposite for a typical man and a typical sword..

But then again, neither sword nor man had ever been anything typical.

"Not Louise."

A shuffle, a clink. "Careful of your sleeves, partner." Jack soon shucked his heavy woolen tunic to reveal a long-sleeved shirt, rolling up his sleeves to expose a pair of markings on his wrists. Interesting... a barbaric practice, Perhaps something to do with the magic that he performed? She had seen a wand in the form of a glove before, and even a bracer. But what if the materials necessary were put under the skin...?

Apparently satisfied with his work, Jack stood and began to swing the sword around, experimentally. She shuddered briefly at the thought of that sword simply smashing her heavier golems apart. Nightmares had stalked her dreams for a while afterwards; the Spelldrinker slipping between her ribs and through her heart. There were more than one myth surrounding the legendary blade, not the least of which was the one which named it souldrinker.

Shaking her own confusion from her head, she watched as Jack settled back down and the blade squawked out advice on how to use him. Advice that usually encouraged stabbing people in the face with his tip.

"So what about that pink haired girl, partner? Whats your deal with her?"

"Helping."

"Aww, what's the matter? Want her all to yourself?" Teased the blade. Somehow, it was even worse than Old Man Osmond without needing lecherous eyes or wandering hands. For many people – herself included – this fact alone would have given pause, but the man was unblinking.

"Angry."

"Oh. Right. Angry little pinkie, ain't she?"

The man's voice, while monotone nevertheless managed to put soul-rattling empathy into that one short, single. "Yes."

Founder damn her, but he seemed the type – were he more expressive and his attitude likewise different – to egg it on, and mock it for not doing enough.

Derflinger clacked unhappily. "Only when you're not around to get caught in the blast?"

"... no."

"But everybody else is fair game?"

"No."

**= Somewhere... =**

He steps through the portal, and heavy boots designed for plodding across the ocean floor crush delicate blades of grass with a wet crackle.

Jenkins looked around him, and breathed a sigh as the bright sun bathed him in light. It had been so long. So very, very long since he had felt the sun on his skin. He worked his way up a hill, sure steps chewing up distance and elevation like oh so much canned bread as his eyes looked through the sealed porthole of his helmet.

Grass was growing, trees rustled in the wind.

The man in the heavy diving suit succumbed to temptation as he reached the top of the small hill, and gripped the sides of his helmet. He lifted it off his shoulders, and took in a lungful of fresh air.

Smiling, breathing, he let the pale skin of his face soak sunlight and let his lungs fill with dry air.

His eyes flickered open, and that moment of fragile peace vanished. He looked around, his senses enveloping the space around him. In the distance, he saw a cake of a city; a bastion layered one ring of white stone atop the previous one in concentric circles, of stone wall, with a massive formation jutting out like a massive axehead coming from the earth.

But the portal pulsed behind him, reminding him that it was time to leave.

Another glance around.

No sign of Jack.

_Too bad._

Ripping the package off his hip, he dropped its contents – an audio diary and a small hand-written note – onto the ground and then turned, striding down the slope and back towards the rip in reality he had helped create.

Helmet snapping to its proper place, Jenkins thrust one foot through the portal and without ceremony returned to Rapture.

**= Courtyard, Tristian Academy =**

"Nope, don't think so."

Derflinger murmured quietly (for once), as Jack scraped the whetstone against the blade's tip, sharpening it to a razor's edge. The tip, he had been told, was the true killing part of a sword; its length and the reach it afforded was made to be used, otherwise all you had was 'a heavy knife with some bits added on'. The sword hummed again, vibrating the blade, and the brass 'mouth' clacked again. "Feels alright to me, Partner."

"Good."

He reached for a small jar, filled with oil.

"Ooh, oil time!" Grasping the sword with the rag in his hand, Jack poured the oil over the freshly manicured steel, and then drew his hand along its length with a clean rag and carefully scrubbed off the rest of the oil, leaving behind a thin layer to coat the singing steel blade and protect it from the elements. In his hands, Derflinger purred, catlike, as Jack carefully gave the blade another once-over, to pick out any more flaws. Nicks, patches of rust and even burrs in the metal had been slowly and carefully smoothed over, scrubbed off and taken out.

"Magic's all fine an' that for keeping the rust off, but nothing beats a good clean, partner. Wooo-ee I feel like a new sword already. And this is coming from me."

Jack's lips widened into a small smile, and he chuckled softly as the sword playfully hummed and made small swishing noises whenever he twisted or turned it in the light, or otherwise waved it around, punctuating each motion with soft cackling as steel sang.

"Enjoying this." The splicer observed, placing the scabbard on the grass and then resting the sword on it, keeping it off the afternoon grass.

Derf chuckled, and his brass fittings clacked as Jack began to pick up the tools and rags and pottles of oil. He'd have to return them to Siesta, as soon as he found a decent sword-belt...

A cough, somewhat polite, drew his attention.

It was far too close.

Jack whirled around, Derflinger whipping along with a yelp, and his tip sang through the air to a guard position. The runes on his left hand blazed as his heart raced, flooding his body with adrenaline and...

Jean Colbert lowered his fist, eyes riveted to the razor-sharp tip of the blade a scant five inches from his face.

"W-well... uh..."

Derflinger 'ah'd.

"Hey, baldy! Don't I know you from somewhere?" He inquired.

The teacher adjusted his glasses. "Y-yes, you should. I used to clean you whenever I was doing inventory in the Vault..."

"And a damn fine job you did!" Roared the blade, shaking in metallic fury. "Do you know how bad that rust itches!? I spent a good damn decade with that thing growing on my strong, and unlike you meaty bastards I can't just reach down and scratch it!"

"R-really? I... I meant... uh... wait..."

Derflinger 'snorted'. "Meh. I'd ask Jack to paddle you with me but that might still be illegal around here. Learn to thin your oils, you loony, it was so thick if I had hands I could scrape it up into a ball and knock a hole in the wall with it!"

Jack blinked, turning from Jean to look at his sword with a short, flat, "What."

"You'd be surprised at what they outlaw here, Partner."

The splicer shook his head. "Not that."

"Oh. Yeah, really; this guy was so bad at swords. Mage, I reckon." The little fittings at the tips of the crossguard shifted, as if they were shoulders shrugging. "An' partner; you reckon that maid girl w-"

Jack interrupted the blade with the soft click of a sword slipping home inside its scabbard, and after a strangled squawk Derflinger fell silent.

Colbert coughed politely into a clenched fist, and stowed his staff away."Well... I suppose you'd like to know what I was doing here?"

"Yes." Jack nodded, before quickly adding on a brief "Please."

"Well... I was just wondering; the letters on your wrench, I took a rubbing of them, you do remember?"

"Yes."

"I compared them to some runes in our library and found an exact match. Its an artifact that we had in the vault, a powerful device of some kind. Would you happen to recognize this?"

The paper was unrolled. It was a sketch of a smooth tube, a section of piping, though more importantly it was of the letters on the side, copied out a half-dozen times on the paper alone. Jack stared at it, the breath catching in his throat and his heartbeat quickening yet again. He read, reread and then double checked the writing on the pipe, and nodded, briefly.

"Yes."

Colbert made a sound not unlike that of a 'squeee'.

"C-could I ask you to translate? Its been quite the academic mystery over the years, and I would like to know what it meant!" Flustered, he adjusted his glasses and pointed at the first line. "Academically, of course, there's been a lot of conjecture as to what it could possibly me-"

Jack continued to stare, but this time it was at Colbert with an incredulous expression.

"... sorry. After you, Mister Jack."

The splicer shook his head, perhaps in disbelief, and read aloud the first line of the text.

"Made in Rapture."

"... and...?" Prompted Jean Colbert, eyeing the rest of the short text.

His brow furrowed. "High explosive. Handle with care."


End file.
